The new NFL channel has finally arrived on Roku. After dropping NFL Now from the Roku channel store with the promise of delivering an all-new NFL channel "by kick-off", that new channel is now available - but only if you still have the old NFL Now channel on your Roku.
As the NFL starts Week 4 of the 2015 season, the NFL channel has quietly launched. As of the posting of this article, you won't find NFL in the Roku channel store - not on the device and not on the Roku website. It appeared when I forced a Roku system update to install private channels onto my device. The Roku showed that NFL Now was being updated; when the updates were done, a channel called simply "NFL" took the place of the old NFL Now channel, sporting a gold NFL logo.
As promised, the channel offers access to both Gamepass and NFL Now. The main menu on the NFL channel launches with three main options across the top: The current game available through Gamepass, NFL Now, and Most Popular.
- Gamepass offers game highlights for free. If you're a Gamepass subscriber, you can also watch the current game and a condensed game.
- NFL Now offers a livestream video
- Most Popular has a selection of short videos, 1 to 2 minutes each. These videos are free to all viewers.
Scroll down a row for access to Games, Teams, and NFL Now:
- NFL Now gives you access to the same livestream in the top row, as well as on demand videos.
- Games provides access to free highlight videos and full and condensed games for Gamepass subscribers. Content is organized by week.
- Teams offers the same free highlight videos and full and condensed games for Gamepass subscribers, but organized by team. You'll also find videos specific to each team under this option.
If you have NFL Now on your Roku, it should update to NFL on the automatic daily system update. In fact, you may have it already. If not, you can force an update by going to your Roku's home screen and then select Settings > System > System update > Check now. Or simply launch the private channel Update My Channel if you have it installed.
If you never loaded the NFL Now channel, or if you deleted it when it went dead, you're out of luck - for now. I would expect the NFL channel to officially launch in the Roku channel store any day. In the meantime, this article offers some ways to watch NFL on Roku.
For a preview of the new NFL channel, some screenshots are shown below.
