ESPN has most of it, Netflix has five games, and Game Pass has everything. Here’s how to watch the NFL in Central America, including the free option most people miss.
The 2026 NFL season starts tomorrow, and every year more people down here follow it. Which brings up the same question every September: how can you actually watch it in this part of the world?
If you’ve just moved to the region from the States, the answer isn’t the one you’re used to. Your NFL+ subscription won’t work here. Neither will Sunday Ticket. Both are locked to the US, and neither travels well.
The good news is that what replaces them is more straightforward than you might expect, and one of the options is free.
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ESPN and Disney+
ESPN on Cable
ESPN carries the NFL across Central America, and there are two ways to get it: the ESPN channels on your cable package, or streaming through Disney+.
Start by checking what you already have. We found six ESPN channels sitting on a standard Costa Rican cable package, which had been there for years unnoticed. If your package includes them, the football is already on your TV and you don’t need to pay for anything else.
The coverage is substantial. On a typical Sunday, ESPN carries five games spread across the day, from the late morning slot through to the evening game, plus NFL RedZone running through the middle of the afternoon. RedZone is worth calling out, because it’s a paid add-on in most countries and here it’s just a channel. Monday Night Football is included.
It’s worth pointing out that commentary is in Spanish, produced out of Mexico, with the pre-game show coming from there too. We understand that might be a dealbreaker , so if you want the American broadcast in English, then Game Pass might be the way to go instead.
ESPN on the Disney+ App
Disney+ carries the same games through its ESPN section, which isn’t obvious when you open the app and land on the Disney catalog. Look for the ESPN tab along the top, then the NFL page inside it. Once you’re there you get a proper schedule listing every upcoming game with dates and times, running about two weeks ahead. That’s better than your cable guide, which only goes out about five days.
The one thing missing is replays. There’s no on-demand section for the NFL in Disney+, so if you miss a game live your only option is catching a repeat on the cable channels, and those turn up at whatever hour suits ESPN.
Netflix
This one catches people out, because nobody expects football on Netflix. But there are five games this season and you probably already have the subscription.
The schedule is fixed and it’s worth knowing in advance:
- Thursday, September 10: Rams against the 49ers, live from Melbourne. The NFL’s first ever regular season game in Australia, and one of the odder scheduling quirks you’ll come across. Kickoff is Thursday evening here, which is Friday morning in Melbourne. The NFL schedules its international games around American television, so the Australians get a 10:35 AM start on a workday so that the game can hit primetime in the States.
- Wednesday, November 25: Packers at Rams, the league’s first Thanksgiving Eve game.
- Friday, December 25: a Christmas Day doubleheader, Packers at Bears followed by Bills at Broncos.
- Saturday, January 9: a Week 18 game, with the matchup announced later in the season once it’s clear which teams have something to play for.
Netflix also has NFL Honors, the awards show, during Super Bowl week in February.
One thing worth knowing: these games don’t stay up long. Netflix keeps them available for roughly a day internationally before they come down, so this isn’t a service where you can watch a game from three weeks ago.
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NFL Game Pass
If you want everything without the stress of not knowing if your game is on, this is the one. NFL Game Pass International is run by DAZN, and it carries all 335 games: every regular season game, every playoff game, and the Super Bowl. It also includes RedZone, NFL Network, and the archive.
The two things it does that ESPN doesn’t are worth understanding before you decide.
- Everything is on demand. Every game is there to watch whenever you want, which matters more than it sounds. Sunday games run into the evening here and Monday night football finishes after nine. If you’d rather watch on Tuesday morning, Game Pass is the only option that lets you.
- You get the American broadcast. Commentary is available in English or Spanish, so if you want the US call rather than the regional Spanish feed, that’s a reason on its own.
Pricing
Pricing in Costa Rica breaks into three options, and one of them is a trap:
- Season Pro, $149.99 upfront for the whole season. This is the one to take.
- Weekly Pro, $15.99 for seven days of full access, one payment, no commitment. Good for the playoffs, or a week when your team has something big on, or just trying it out. Also good if you’re traveling short term in the region.
- Monthly, $27.99 a month. Avoid this. It looks like the flexible option, but it’s a twelve-month contract, so you’d pay $335 a year for a five-month season. More than double the upfront price.
There’s a Season Pro Ultimate tier at $174.99 which adds multiview for up to four games at once, HDR, and more devices. Worth it if you’re the sort who watches three games simultaneously, unnecessary otherwise.
And there’s also a free tier. Register without paying and you get one live regular season game every week, the NFL Network channel, plus highlights and documentaries. That applies across Latin America outside Mexico, so anywhere in Central America. It’s a genuinely good deal for a casual viewer and almost nobody knows it exists.
These prices are what DAZN quotes in Costa Rica. We couldn’t check the other six countries, because DAZN reads your location and sends you to your own country’s page whichever URL you try (and we tried a few). They shouldn’t – shouldn’t – be wildly different, though, and the above figures should give you a rough idea of what to expect. Don’t come after us if your local page says something else. Just open dazn.com wherever you are and it’ll show you.
A warning for Americans, whether you’re moving down here or just visiting. The US version of Game Pass no longer exists. It was replaced by NFL+ and Sunday Ticket, and both are locked to the States. If you’re flying down for a week in Tamarindo assuming your existing subscription comes with you, it doesn’t. Game Pass International is a separate product and you’d need to buy it here (the good news is, you can just snap up the weekly version to cover your travels and cancel when you get home).
If you’re coming outside the United States, though, you’re probably good. Game Pass International is the same product worldwide outside the US and China, and DAZN says it works across more than 200 countries, so a subscription bought in London or Toronto should follow you to any country in Central America.
What About Belize?
We’ve learned from bitter experience that Belize is usually the odd one out in these sporting guides, since it sometimes gets grouped with the Caribbean for broadcast rights rather than with the rest of Central America. But for the NFL, it’s fine. Disney+ in Belize runs on the Latin American catalog rather than a Caribbean one, so the ESPN coverage described above should be the same as everywhere else. Whether your cable package carries the ESPN channels is worth checking locally, but the streaming route works. Game Pass and Netflix both work in Belize the same as anywhere else.
Or Just Go to a Bar
If you’d rather not subscribe to anything, you don’t have to. Walk into pretty much any gringo bar on any given Sunday and the NFL will be on all day, usually across several screens, usually with wings and cold brews. Same with Monday Night Football, Thanksgiving, and other dates.
Consider this the norm for any place with a decent expat or tourist population. The same places will have college football on Saturdays too, if that’s your thing. On both days, games start late morning and run through the evening, which makes for an easy long lunch.
We do this properly once a year for the Super Bowl, with recommendations country by country. That guide is worth a look outside February too, because the places showing the Super Bowl are generally the same places showing games every Sunday.
Wrapping Up
A quick note on time zones, because they’re simpler here than in the States. Six of the seven countries sit on Central Time all year, and Panama is an hour ahead on Eastern. Sunday’s early games start at 11:00 AM in most of the region and noon in Panama.
Everything above is what each service is entitled to show, which isn’t always the same as what turns up on screen. We checked ESPN’s listings against what was actually scheduled on both cable and Disney+ and found them consistent, which is more than can be said for some broadcasters down here.
Otherwise, that’s your next five months good to go. Wherever you are in the region, and whoever you follow, enjoy the season!
