NFL football is back: 5 things to watch on and off the field

NFL football returns this week, and millions of fans are gearing up to lock in on another season of the country’s most popular pro sports league. 

The 2026 campaign arrives at a time when fans are paying more than ever to attend games in person, streaming platforms are becoming the go-to way to watch your favorite team, and gambling has embedded itself as a prominent feature of the weekly game-day experience for many.  

Here are five things to watch for this NFL season, both on and off the gridiron. 

League’s media strategy under scrutiny 

The NFL is expected to be the largest driver of audiences for any media company with rights to show its games.  

An increasing number of the league’s media partners comprises streaming platforms like Netflix and Amazon, which are using rights to show top NFL games in primetime and on holidays as a way to drive subscriptions and lure blue-chip advertisers.  

How the NFL does business with media companies, however, is raising concern for some in the federal government.  

Reports surfaced this summer suggesting the Department of Justice is considering probing the NFL over what critics say is anticompetitive behavior in its dealmaking with major media companies.  

This year, it will be more expensive than ever to watch the NFL, with fans who wish to see every game needing to sign up for as many as a half dozen streaming services and paying more than $1,000 for the season to do so.  

The rising costs comes as lawmakers on Capitol Hill and federal regulators have floated a revamp of the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, a law created explicitly with the NFL in mind that grants teams the ability to collectively license the sponsored telecasts of their games to national broadcast networks.     

Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) earlier this year put forth a bill she is calling the For the Fans Act, a law that would regulate how the NFL negotiates and makes its media deals.  

“Gigantic streaming services and big sports leagues have created a complicated and expensive maze of subscriptions that either stop fans from watching their teams altogether or gouge fans to simply watch the teams they love,” Baldwin said in introducing the legislation. “It shouldn’t take ten different subscriptions and a second mortgage to watch sports.”

10 years after Kaepernick, league navigates culture wars

It’s been a decade since former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem before games, igniting a national conversation about race, police brutality and the power of political speech in pro sports.  

Kaepernick started a social justice movement among NFL players that season and sparked intense social discourse as President Trump ran for the Oval Office in 2016. 

It led the league to double down on its efforts to embrace and promote diversity while it also tried to avoid turning off fans angered by the sideline protests.  

A league that features only three Black head coaches, the NFL is currently being sued by Brian Flores, a Black coach who alleges the league is not following its self-imposed Rooney Rule, which dictates teams must consider minority head coaches in the hiring process.  

The NFL........

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