Roughly an hour before the 1 p.m. ET kickoff window on September 13, NFL fans across the country began reporting they could not access NFL RedZone or the broader NFL app, right as the league’s opening Sunday slate of eight games got underway. NFL+ confirmed the problem in a statement acknowledging issues affecting the NFL+ experience and said the company was working to fix them, while apologizing for the inconvenience and directing affected subscribers to file a support ticket.
How widespread was the outage?
Significant. Downdetector reports climbed steadily throughout the early afternoon, reaching roughly 6,200 reports shortly before 1 p.m. and climbing past 16,500 by around 1:10 p.m., with complaint volume peaking at about four reports per minute. Breakdown data showed the overwhelming majority of complaints, roughly 72% to 75% depending on the reporting window, centered on the app itself, while another 16% to 19% involved video streaming specifically and a smaller share flagged website access issues.
What did fans actually experience trying to use the service?
A mix of blank screens, blinking video, authentication failures and outright inability to load RedZone at all. Complaints came in from states as geographically spread out as Oklahoma and Wyoming, with users describing screens that flickered on and off even as the league indicated the issue was being addressed. Several frustrated subscribers specifically noted they had just paid for annual RedZone or NFL+ subscriptions only to find the service unusable on the first meaningful Sunday of the season.
Why did this particular outage sting so much for fans?
Timing. The opening Sunday of a new NFL season carries an outsized level of anticipation, especially for RedZone, the whip-around channel hosted by Scott Hanson that cuts between every live scoring drive across the league’s early afternoon window. Missing that experience on day one, rather than during a random midseason Sunday, appeared to amplify the frustration visible across social media, with several fans specifically calling out the irony of paying for a premium service that failed exactly when demand was highest.
Has something like this happened before?
Yes, repeatedly in recent seasons. NFL RedZone experienced a broadcast crash during Week 5 of the 2025 season that left fans watching a frozen picture during a game deciding drive, and separately dealt with audio static issues during Week 14 that same year. Streaming outages tied to NFL RedZone broadcast rights partners go back even further, including a 2022 outage that hit DirecTV’s Sunday Ticket service, Sling TV and YouTube TV simultaneously during that year’s Week 2 slate. The recurring pattern has left some fans openly skeptical that reliability issues get meaningfully addressed between seasons.
Has NFL+ said when the issue will be fixed?
No specific timetable was given as of the outage’s peak. The company’s statement acknowledged the issues without committing to a resolution window, and status tracking sites showed conflicting information later in the day, with some outage trackers still reflecting active complaints while the league’s own official status page reportedly showed systems as operational with no incidents logged for the day.
Are refunds a possibility for affected subscribers?
Nothing has been confirmed. Some fans have publicly called for compensation given the timing and scale of the disruption, but neither the NFL nor NFL+ has issued any statement addressing refunds or credits as of this writing.
