How NFL TV coverage works
Why the game on your TV depends on where you live, in five short answers.
National games
Thursday Night Football (Prime Video), Sunday Night Football (NBC), Monday Night Football (ESPN and ABC) and NFL Network games are national. Everyone can watch the same game at the same time.
Regional games on Sunday afternoon
Most Sunday games kick off at 1:00 PM or around 4:05 to 4:25 PM Eastern on CBS or FOX. There are more games than channels, so each network sends a different game to each of the 210 TV markets. That is what a coverage map shows.
Single games and doubleheaders
Each Sunday one network has the doubleheader: two games in most markets, at 1:00 and 4:25 PM ET. The other network has one game per market, at 1:00 or 4:05 PM ET. The two networks swap from week to week.
Home markets come first
In a team’s home TV market, the local station on that network shows the home team’s game. Outside home markets, the network picks a game for each area, usually the nearest team or the game with the most local interest.
How to watch the rest
NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube TV and YouTube carries the out-of-market Sunday afternoon games for a subscription fee. Live TV streaming services carry your local CBS and FOX stations, with the same regional game your antenna would get.
Questions people ask
What is a home market?
The TV market around a team’s stadium. Local CBS and FOX stations there show their team’s game when it is on that network.
Why is the game on my TV different from my friend’s in another state?
Sunday afternoon games on CBS and FOX are regional: each network sends a different game to each TV market, so two cities can see two different games at the same hour.
Are there still blackouts?
The old rule that blacked out home games that did not sell out has been suspended since 2015, so home games are shown in their market.
How does this site know which game my station shows?
Each local station lists its Sunday games in the public TV guide. This site reads the listings of every market’s own CBS and FOX stations, 209 markets, every few hours, and draws them as the map.