The NFL officially kicked off last weekend and today the National Football League (NFL) announced the recently launched NFL Zone within the Roku Sports experience to kick off the 2023 NFL season.
The partnership between Roku and the NFL marks the first official league-branded zone within Roku’s Sports experience. Available now, the NFL Zone offers football fans a centralized location to find live and upcoming games, so they can spend less time figuring out where to watch the game and more time rooting for their favorite teams. Users can also tune in for weekly game previews, League highlights, and additional NFL content, all within the zone. It is built into the Roku sports section from the Roku Home Page. This comes as Roku has been experimenting with new ways to find content and services.
“Last year we introduced the Sports experience for our highly engaged sports audience, making it simpler for Roku users to watch sports programming,” said Gidon Katz, President, Consumer Experience, at Roku. “As we start the biggest sports season of the year, providing easy access to NFL games and content to our millions of users is a top priority for us. We look forward to fans immersing themselves within the NFL Zone and making it their destination to find NFL games.”
“We are excited to partner with Roku to increase discoverability of NFL programming to football fans,” said Hans Schroeder, NFL Executive Vice President of Media Distribution. “With the launch of the NFL Zone, Roku users can easily find the games they want to watch, from one place. We are thrilled to provide our fans with an excellent option to follow their favorite teams all season long.”
In addition to live and upcoming games, the NFL Zone provides weekly matchup previews, NFL highlights, and access to the NFL App and NFL Channel. Viewers can find the NFL Zone directly from Sports in Roku’s Home Screen Menu as well as Roku Search. Throughout the season, the NFL Zone will be prominently featured within the Sports experience.
NFL+, the League’s exclusive streaming video service, is available within the NFL App on Roku devices and now enters its second season with exciting upgrades. NFL+ is available for $6.99/month or $49.99/year, and includes NFL Network across devices, live out-of-market preseason games, live local and primetime regular season and postseason games (phone and tablet only), live local and national audio for every game, NFL Films’ archives, and more. Fans can upgrade to NFL+ Premium for $14.99/month or $99.99/year and get all of the content and features of NFL+ as well as full and condensed game replays, the All-22 Coaches Film, and now NFL RedZone. Also, for a limited time only, NFL Media is offering a 20% discount off the yearly subscription price for both NFL+ and NFL+ Premium. The NFL Zone also provides links to services that carry NFL games and programming such as DirecTV Stream, Hulu+ Live TV, an NFL live Channel from the Roku Channel, Sling TV, the ESPN app, and more.
This new partnership also builds on the existing ways that Roku and the NFL have worked together to bring steamers great content. Last month, Roku Original documentary “NFL Draft: The Pick is in” launched on The Roku Channel in partnership with NFL Films and Skydance Sports. “NFL Draft: The Pick Is In” lets audiences look behind the scenes of the high-pressure and high-stakes draft rooms. The documentary scored big during its opening weekend, becoming the #1 Roku Original Documentary premiere. A second installment has been greenlit centered on the 2024 NFL Draft.
“Sports have long provided a large, engaged audience for advertisers, and we’re excited to bring scale and fandom to marketers through the NFL Zone,” said Alison Levin, VP, Ad Revenue and Marketing Solutions at Roku. “This collaboration brings together the most popular content across sports and entertainment with Roku’s incredible U.S. reach for a combination that advertisers will crave.”
