Verizon Plus Play plus NFL Plus

Verizon and the NFL go way back, and on Wednesday, the two groups announced their next new partnership: NFL Plus, the NFL’s new mobile streaming service, will be one of the streaming services offered on Plus Play, Verizon’s upcoming subscription management platform.

Verizon first announced Plus Play in March, and to me, it sounds a lot like Apple’s Channels product. With Channels, you can subscribe to streaming services using your information and payment details linked to your Apple ID and manage those services from your Apple ID account instead of trying to remember a bunch of disparate logins. Plus Play seems to be Verizon’s take on a similar idea, but instead, you manage things via your Verizon account. Verizon has already said that partners like Netflix, Peloton, Disney Plus, and HBO Max are on board, and now we can count the NFL among them.

That said, Plus Play still isn’t widely available yet, so if you really wanted to manage your NFL Plus through the platform, you probably can’t. Plus Play is currently in “trials,” according to Wednesday’s press release, and is set to launch in early access “later this year.”

For years, Verizon was the only place you could stream NFL games on a mobile phone, but that exclusivity ran out in 2017. Now, with NFL Plus, there’s once again a centralized spot to watch NFL games on your mobile phone, and you’ll soon be able to manage that service through Verizon. Teammates for life, I guess.