NBC’s Premier League rights renewal in 2022 (a six-year, reported $2.7 billion contract running through 2028) restructured how Americans watch English top-flight football. The pre-renewal cable-and-Peacock split, where 175 marquee matches landed on NBC linear and the remainder streamed on Peacock with various premium-tier complications, gave way to a cleaner structure: every match on Peacock for $7.99 a month, with cable simulcasts on NBC and USA Network as a complement rather than a fragmentation.
Year four of the renewal arrives in 2026 with a US Premier League audience that has settled into the Peacock structure. The audience tells a story about how streaming-exclusive league rights work when the underlying product has scale and the platform commits to studio infrastructure.
The widget pulls the next two weeks of Premier League fixtures. Every match streams on Peacock; the marquee matches simulcast on USA Network or NBC.
What 2026 looks like in the structure
Every Premier League match — all 380 across the season, including the rescheduled cup-displaced matches and the late-season relegation six-pointers that don’t make linear TV in many markets — streams on Peacock at $7.99 a month for the standard tier or $13.99 for Premium Plus.
NBC and USA Network simulcast roughly 175 matches on cable across the season. The Saturday 7:30am Eastern early-window kickoff typically lands on USA Network. The Saturday 10am or 12:30pm Eastern marquee slot also tends to land on USA. Sunday morning fixtures at 11:30am Eastern split between NBC and USA depending on the matchup. The full simulcast slate is published at the start of each season and updates as broadcast slot decisions get finalized.
NBC broadcasts a marquee Premier League slate on Saturday mornings at 10am Eastern as Premier League Mornings — the in-studio show at NBC’s Stamford Connecticut studios that has run since 2013. Rebecca Lowe anchors the studio with Robbie Mustoe, Robbie Earle, Tim Howard, and Kyle Martino in rotating roles. The show is one of the most consistent presentation packages in US soccer broadcasting.
The audience: where the Peacock era has reached
NBC’s most recently disclosed Premier League audience metrics show year-over-year growth across the Peacock era. The 2024-25 season set Premier League US average-audience records for both linear NBC simulcasts and Peacock streaming, with marquee Saturday-noon matches drawing audiences competitive with mid-tier MLB and NHL regular-season broadcasts.
The Peacock platform’s overall sports identity has materialized around three pillars — Sunday Night Football, the Olympics, and Premier League. The Premier League piece is the year-round live-content anchor that gives Peacock a steady reason to exist between NFL seasons and Olympic windows.
The NBA’s new Peacock rights deal, starting in the 2025-26 season, adds another year-round live anchor. The combined NBA-and-Premier-League calendar gives the platform a complete weekly live broadcast across the Saturday Premier League morning, the Sunday Night Football window in fall, and an NBA broadcast slate through the basketball calendar.
The cup-rights complication
Peacock’s exclusivity covers Premier League domestic competition only. The cup competitions split across other platforms:
- FA Cup runs on ESPN+ at $11.99 a month, or $10.99 in the Disney+ bundle.
- EFL Cup (Carabao Cup) runs on Paramount+ at $7.99 a month, bundled with Champions League rights.
- Champions League and Europa League run on Paramount+, the same subscription as EFL Cup.
- Community Shield has moved between Paramount+ and ESPN+ across recent cycles.
A Premier League fan who wants to follow a club through every domestic cup tie plus European football needs Peacock plus Paramount+ plus ESPN+ — roughly $28 a month for the full stack, or $336 a year before any annual-subscription discounts.
That stack compares unfavorably to the MLS Apple TV structure, where $99 a year covers regular season, MLS Cup playoffs, and Leagues Cup. The Premier League fragmentation reflects the league’s negotiating leverage (different rights cycles, different broadcasters, different product roadmaps) and the absence of a single buyer willing to pay for the full package.
What’s shifted across the deal’s first four years
The 2022 renewal launched at a moment when streaming-exclusive league rights were still novel. Apple’s MLS deal had not yet started (that started in February 2023) and the Premier League’s Peacock structure was a leading example of the new model.
Across the deal’s first four years, three things have changed:
First, the cable-cord-cutting curve continued. NBC and USA Network’s reach has shrunk through every cable-subscriber-attrition year, which has pushed more Premier League viewing to Peacock as the streaming-exclusive secondary distribution. The early years of the renewal had cable as the primary path for marquee matches; by 2026, Peacock is the primary path for the broader audience even on simulcast Saturdays.
Second, the studio infrastructure has scaled. Premier League Mornings has expanded its run time, added documentary content, and built up year-round content beyond match days. The studio investment compares favorably to the production lift that the Apple-MLS structure has built around the Major League Soccer broadcast.
Third, the audience has shifted geographically. Premier League viewership in the US has historically over-indexed in the Northeast and California; the Peacock era has expanded the audience footprint to the Sun Belt and the South in measurable ways. Atlanta, Houston, Charlotte, and Nashville now produce Premier League audiences in the top-twenty US metro rankings, which they did not in the pre-Peacock era.
After 2028
The next Premier League rights cycle, which negotiates around the 2028 horizon, will be a meaningful test of whether the Peacock structure has reached its valuation ceiling. NBC’s 2022 deal was a step-change in absolute dollars relative to the prior cycle; the 2028 renewal conversation will involve Peacock’s track record, the streaming-exclusive precedent set by Apple’s MLS deal, and the broader question of whether Premier League US rights have a marginal-buyer competitor at NBC’s price level.
Apple, Amazon, and Disney have each been reported as having explored Premier League rights interest at various points across the 2022-2026 window. Whether any of those becomes a serious bid in the 2028 negotiation will depend on the broader streaming-rights market. For now, through 2028, Peacock holds every Premier League match, NBC and USA Network simulcast the marquee slate, and the structure has settled into the dominant US soccer broadcast of the decade.
Quick reference
- Premier League: Peacock ($7.99/month) — every match through 2028
- NBC and USA Network simulcasts: ~175 marquee matches per season
- FA Cup: ESPN+ ($11.99/month or $10.99 Disney+ bundle)
- EFL Cup: Paramount+ ($7.99/month)
- Champions League: Paramount+ — same subscription as EFL Cup
- Community Shield: Varies by year, Paramount+ or ESPN+