NWSL Dumps Victory+ After Missed Payments, Signs Roku for Free Sunday Night Games

The NWSL just proved a basic business rule: if you don't pay your bills, you lose the contract.

The league terminated its media rights agreement with Victory+ in late July after the free streaming platform missed payments it owed the NWSL, according to Sportico and Sportcal. Victory+ had signed on last September as the league's fifth national media partner, landing rights to 57 matches per season including 25 exclusive Sunday night broadcasts. The Athletic reported, per The New York Times, that unfulfilled payments from Victory+ were a factor in the league cutting ties, citing league sources who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Victory+ launched in 2024 with a mission to make sports streaming free. It's now lost multiple marquee deals. Sportico noted the platform has also parted ways with the Anaheim Ducks and the Texas Rangers. Two seasons in, that's a pattern, not a fluke.

When the NWSL cut Victory+ loose, it didn't have a replacement lined up. Matches scheduled for Victory+ shifted temporarily to NWSL+, the league's own direct-to-consumer streaming service, while the league shopped for a new partner.

That search ended with Roku. Starting Saturday, August 30, the Roku Sports Channel becomes the exclusive home for eight Sunday night NWSL matches through the rest of the 2026 season, according to the league and confirmed across Engadget, the Hollywood Reporter, TV News Check, and equalizersoccer. The package expands to 25 Sunday night games in 2027. The opener pits Seattle Reign FC against the Houston Dash. The 2026 package wraps October 25 with San Diego Wave FC facing Boston Legacy FC.

It's free. No subscription. Available on Roku devices and TVs, TheRokuChannel.com, iOS and Android, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung TVs, Google TVs and other Android TV OS devices.

Financial terms weren't disclosed. NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman told The Athletic, as reported by the Times, that the league ran a competitive process and got real interest from paid subscription services, but picked Roku anyway. "Ultimately, Roku stood out as the right partner because of its tremendous scale, commitment to discoverability and ability to reach both existing fans and entirely new audiences," Berman said.

That reach argument checks out on the numbers. Roku's platform pulled 3% of total TV viewing time in June, according to Nielsen, second among largely free, ad-supported apps only to YouTube. Roku says it reaches more than half of U.S. streaming households. TV News Check reported Roku's Sports Zones saw a 122% jump in streaming hours and an 80% increase in unique visitors year-over-year in the second quarter.

Roku's head of sports, Joe Franzetta, called the timing a "watershed year for women's soccer," pointing to the run-up to the 2027 FIFA Women's World Cup, which Netflix will carry exclusively in the U.S. NWSL chief marketing officer Rachel Epstein said the goal is making matches easier for fans to find "wherever they are."

There's a wrinkle worth flagging. Fox Corp agreed in June to acquire Roku for $22 billion, a deal Sportico reports isn't expected to close until early 2027, meaning it hasn't closed yet as of today. If it goes through, The Roku Channel would sit under the same roof as Fox's existing free service, Tubi. Fox has said it plans to keep the two brands separate post-merger. Combined, Sportico notes, they'd be the third-largest streaming service by Nielsen's measure. Whether that ownership change affects the NWSL deal down the road is an open question nobody's answering yet, since the acquisition hasn't closed.

The Roku deal doesn't touch the NWSL's existing arrangements with CBS Sports, ESPN, Amazon Prime Video and Scripps Sports. Those deals, worth a combined $240 million when originally signed, run through the end of the 2027 season. Ion also carries some games. Add NWSL+ into the mix and a fan looking for a single match can end up needing five or six different apps depending on the week.

That fragmentation isn't new to women's soccer specifically. It's the same mess baseball and football fans deal with under regional sports network and streaming carve-ups. But it does undercut the free-access pitch a little: free is good, finding the game is still a chore.

The bigger accountability question sits with Victory+, not Roku or the league. A platform built its entire brand around making sports streaming free and accessible, signed rights deals across multiple sports, and then failed to pay the partners it signed with. The NWSL wasn't alone in walking away. Whether Victory+ survives as a business, and what happens to fans who built viewing habits around a service that's now shedding rights deals, remains unresolved. No source in this reporting details Victory+'s current financial standing or whether it faces further rights terminations beyond the Ducks, Rangers and NWSL.