The National Football League says it has signed a new distribution agreement with the Walt Disney Company that will see its two linear pay TV channels join the Hulu with Live TV lineup.
The channels, NFL Network and NFL RedZone, are expected to be added to Hulu with Live TV around August 1, the NFL said in a press release on Tuesday.
“We are excited to bring NFL Network and NFL RedZone to Hulu with Live TV subscribers,” Hans Shroeder, the executive vice president and chief operating officer of NFL Media, said in a statement. “One of our top priorities as a League remains broadening the distribution platforms for NFL content, and so we’re very pleased to bring our lineup of award-winning shows and live games to Hulu’s live subscribers starting in the 2021 NFL season.”
Terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but it comes about a month after the NFL announced long-term television broadcast rights with a handful of media partners, including Hulu’s owner-operator Disney. The league owns both NFL Network and NFL RedZone.
NFL Network offers replays of televised games on other channels, including the championship Super Bowl game each year, interspersed with football-centric news and analysis programming.
NFL RedZone is a premium cable network that offers viewers “every touchdown from every game” played across regional CBS and Fox affiliates every Sunday afternoon, including some games that would otherwise be unavailable in a person’s television market or region. (Full Sunday afternoon games remain accessible only through the NFL Sunday Ticket; Hulu does carry a handful of CBS and Fox affiliated stations.)
Hulu with Live TV offers nearly 70 live channels of local and cable television content for $65 a month. That service also comes with access to the ad-supported library of on-demand content available to subscribers of Hulu’s cheaper $6 a month service.
