Being a fan of an NFL team is expensive. If you want to watch all of your team’s favorite games, the costs add up quickly, especially if you are an out-of-market fan.
In order to watch every San Francisco 49ers game this year, I need several different streaming services and the NFL Sunday Ticket through YouTube TV.
Niners fans in particular have it harder than many other fanbases when it comes to watching all of San Francisco's games. LiveSportsOnTV did a recent study that dives into how much it costs fans to watch all of their team’s games, and the Niners came in as the 10th most expensive team at an estimated cost of $177.89 for the year.
That includes streaming services like Paramount+, Fox One, ESPN Unlimited, Prime Video, and Netflix. The study does not include the cost of the Sunday Ticket, but I can personally attest that I pay roughly $66 per month for that service, which is pretty steep especially when I mostly just use it to watch 49ers games.
The thing that truly stinks is that the Sunday Ticket is all or nothing, meaning you can’t just select one team’s games the way you can with MLB.TV or the NBA League Pass. It’s just the NFL being greedy and maximizing profits rather than doing something that would be better for the consumer, which is why there have been antitrust lawsuits filed against the NFL.
In-market 49ers fans still have it rough when it comes to streaming
But, outside of the Sunday Ticket, Niners fans still have it rough even if you live in the Bay Area and get most of San Francisco’s games through a cable TV package. Obviously, the 49ers are one of only a handful of teams who play on Netflix this season, so some fans had to get a subscription if they didn’t already have one for the Week 1 matchup against the Los Angeles Rams in Australia.
Then, the 49ers have a Monday Night Football matchup in Week 6 against the Washington Commanders, which requires a $30 per-month ESPN Unlimited subscription for the cord-cutters out there.
That means streaming fans have to pay $30 just to watch one Niners game.
San Francisco has two Sunday Night Football games on NBC or Peacock and a game on Amazon Prime Video for Thursday Night Football as well, so the costs just add up.
This doesn’t even include the playoffs. If the Niners make it back to the postseason, fans probably have to buy a Fox One subscription, since most NFC playoff games are on FOX. That service costs $20 per month.
In short, it is expensive to watch pretty much any NFL team, but especially a team like the 49ers that has quite a few high-profile primetime matchups and usually makes the playoffs.
Just the price of being a fan, I suppose.
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