NFL Partners with ESPN for Full-Season African Rights Through Super Bowl LXI
Image by NFL
The National Football League (NFL) confirmed on Thursday that ESPN and ESPN2 will carry every week of the 2026 season live in more than 50 Sub-Saharan African markets, with both channels also simulcast on Disney+ in South Africa. It is the broadest single-season African rollout the league has struck, running from the opening Kickoff Game through to Super Bowl LXI in February.
The National Football League confirmed on Thursday that ESPN and ESPN2 will carry every week of the 2026 season live in more than 50 Sub-Saharan African markets, with both channels also simulcast on Disney+ in South Africa. It is the broadest single-season African rollout the league has struck, running from the opening Kickoff Game through to Super Bowl LXI in February.
Coverage began in the early hours of Thursday, September 10 (1:20am WAT, 2:20am CAT and SAST, 3:20am EAT), with the Seattle Seahawks hosting the New England Patriots, a rematch of Super Bowl LX, which the Seahawks won 29-13 in February. From there the deal covers both Sunday windows, Sunday Night Football, and the primetime run of Monday Night Football and Thursday Night Football through the regular season.
ESPN will carry the play-offs in full
The season closes with Super Bowl LXI at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, airing live in the early hours of Monday, February 15, 2027 (2:30am WAT, 1:30am CAT and SAST, 2:30am EAT).
"The NFL is growing fast across Africa, not only in the size of the fanbase, but in the number of players from the continent that fans can now watch and call their own," said Laura Louisy, NFL senior director of international business development and media. ESPN, she added, gives fans "a consistent home for the game every week."
"The NFL is a major global sports brand with an incredibly strong heritage and growing connections to the continent," said Kyle De Klerk, director: sports for The Walt Disney Company Africa. ESPN, he said, has a "storied, decades-long history" with the league.
The broadcast deal sits on top of work the NFL has already put into the continent: the NFL Academy, an expanding flag football programme, and a growing number of players of African heritage reaching NFL rosters. The league has treated 2026 as something of a marker year on that front, with its draft class drawing on the international pipeline more heavily than in previous years.
Broadcast Contract, Talent Pipeline and African Audiences
A broadcast contract fills a schedule; a talent pipeline gives African audiences a reason to stay with it once the novelty of the Kickoff Game wears off. The NFL has been building the latter for several years through camps, the Academy and flag football; full weekly coverage is what lets that investment convert into an actual viewing habit rather than a once-a-year Super Bowl moment.
For Disney, the NFL is the second marquee live US sports property it has bolted onto ESPN Africa this year, after it secured exclusive sub-Saharan pay-TV rights to the NBA Finals in May. Both deals push the same audience toward the same product: Disney+ in South Africa, where live sport is doing the job that used to belong to linear pay-TV bundles alone. Full-season NFL coverage, rather than a handful of marquee windows, is what makes that subscription argument stick across the year rather than for one weekend in February.
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