This is a list of current (entering the 2016 season) NFL broadcasters, including those for each individual team as well as those that have national rights. Unlike the other three major professional sports leagues in the U.S. (Major League Baseball, the NBA and the NHL), all regular-season and post-season games are shown on American television on one of five national networks. Pre-season games are still televised by regional/local broadcasters.
All regular-season and postseason games are shown in the U.S. on one of five national networks: the broadcast networks of CBS, Fox, or NBC; or the cable channels ESPN or NFL Network. The league does not, in general, have an anti-siphoning rule for regular season games, and such games can be (and are) carried on both the cable outlet and the local affiliate. Selected regular season games air on NFL Network are also simulcast on either CBS or NBC. For those regular season games aired exclusively on NFL Network or ESPN, they are also simulcast on a local broadcast station in each of the home markets of the two participating teams (determined by a bidding process). ESPN also airs one postseason game that is also simulcast on their sister national broadcast network ABC; all other postseason games air televised on either CBS, Fox, or NBC. As part of the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, the U.S government granted the NFL permission to sell the rights to all regular season and postseason games to the national networks, as an exemption to antitrust laws.
Most preseason games, except a few contests such as the Pro Football Hall of Fame Game, are not televised by the national networks, and the league leaves television rights for those contests up to the individual teams. Most teams produce the games, either themselves or with help from the networks, and set up small syndication networks to carry games throughout the league-designated primary and secondary markets each team serves. The stations that win bidding to locally broadcast cable games are not necessarily the same as the ones who broadcast preseason contests, as the bidding processes are separate; this list is of the preseason broadcasters. In the event that a preseason game does not sell out, the local rightsholder must delay the broadcast a minimum of 24 hours (this rule, along with the rest of the league's blackout policies, was suspended for the 2015 season). NFL Network sometimes simulcasts select preseason games using the feeds of the local broadcast crews. In these cases, the NFL does impose an anti-siphoning rule and does not carry a live game in a particular market if a local station is broadcasting the same game.