The NFL Week 1 schedule moves onto Thursday Night Football on Sept. 10, and the Los Angeles Rams vs San Francisco 49ers game will stream exclusively on Netflix. It will not be on TV.
That is why people are searching the Thursday Night Football schedule now. The game starts at 5:35 p.m. MST and 8:35 p.m. ET, and Noah Eagle will handle play-by-play with Luke Kuechly as the analyst. For viewers trying to find the game in the usual place, the answer is simple: this one lives only on streaming.
The matchup is part of NFL Week 1, but the setup is different from the normal Thursday night routine. Netflix has the exclusive stream, which means the Rams and 49ers are tied to one platform for a game that would normally be expected on TV. The schedule also places the game in Melbourne, Australia, adding another layer to the timing for viewers in the United States.
That split between the name and the access is the story. It is Thursday Night Football, but not television Thursday Night Football, and that leaves viewers without Netflix on the outside unless they change how they watch. The broadcast team gives the game a familiar NFL feel, but the distribution does not.
For Noah Eagle, the assignment puts him on one of the most unusual openings on the NFL Week 1 schedule. For viewers, the next step is not checking a channel number but making sure they have Netflix ready before kickoff. When the game begins, the question will not be what TV network has it. It will be whether they can get in at all.
