Score a point for CBS All Access, as it has cut a deal with the NFL so it can start streaming professional football games. The multiyear deal starts this Sunday, December 4th, and extends to CBS’s coverage of regular, preseason and postseason NFL games.
CBS continues to try and make its standalone offering tempting to subscribers. It comes in two flavors: $5.99/month for “limited commercials” and $9.99/month for “commercial free.” At those prices, subscribers are going to expect to see everything that’s on free CBS, so this is an important deal.
This is big for NFL fans who have largely been frozen out of any way of seeing Sunday games online. If you have a CBS channel in your market, you can access the NFL game. If not, you can’t. Still, that’s 150 markets. And once these projects get started, they have a way of expanding.
However, forget about watching Sunday football via the CBS All Access mobile app. Verizon’s current deal with the NFL supersedes this. So, no non-Verizon football for your smartphone. That’s – except for the Thursday Night Football game, which has its own deal with Twitter and… are you following all of this? It’s a mess.
CBS All Access gives subscribers more than 8,500 episodes of current and classic CBS shows. Its big draw may come in February when the new Star Trek: Discovery series launches. You can watch CBS All Access on the CBS website, or on its apps for iOS, Android, Windows 10, and on digital devices including the Xbox One and 360, PS4, Chromecast, Android, Roku, and Amazon Fire TV & Fire Stick.