The Baltimore Ravens (12-5) and Pittsburgh Steelers (10-7) will square off in one of the league’s most intense rivalries in the first round of the NFL playoffs, but there’s a catch. The Steelers-Ravens matchup was given less attention when the NFL revealed its schedule for Wild Card Weekend. It is the only one of the six games in the first round to be behind a paywall, and it will only be available on Prime Video. Positively, they were given a good time slot and will air on Saturday night at 8 p.m. ET in primetime. That didn’t stop unhappy supporters from expressing their emotions openly on social media following the sad news.
“I miss the old days where I could simply watch the playoff game on cable,” a person said to X. One fan said, “Too bad,” in response to Prime’s X announcement. “I was looking forward to watching it.”
In a direct reply, “Nobody is happy about it being on prime,”
You can watch every playoff game if you have an NFL+ subscription. The ability to watch major games without regular cable is preferred by some fans, but it still acts as a paywall for all prospective Steelers-Ravens game spectators.
For NFL fans, this phenomenon is nothing new. Peacock streamed a Kansas City Chiefs vs. Miami Dolphins game exclusively during Wild Card Weekend last season. With an average viewership of over 23 million, it became the most streamed NFL game at the time. With nearly 30 million viewers for each of its two exclusive games on December 25, Netflix’s “NFL Christmas Gameday” shattered the previous record. In the first, the Steelers faced the Chiefs, while in the second, the Ravens faced the Texans.
Fans of the Ravens and Steelers should still have their subscriptions as they each appeared on Prime’s “Thursday Night Football” once this season. On November 7, Baltimore defeated Cincinnati 35-34 in a fierce AFC North matchup, while Pittsburgh lost 24-19 to Cleveland on November 21.
