Roku adds NFL Zone to its software, and not a moment too soon

With the Week 1 games now in the books, Roku today announced that it’s added an NFL Zone within the Sports section of its user interface.

The specialized area, which is available on Roku players and on Roku TVs, gives football fans “a centralized location to find live and upcoming games, so they can spend less time figuring out where to watch the game and more time rooting for their favorite teams..”

The NFL Zone is available in the main sports section of the Roku home screen menu, and you also can access it through Roku’s search function.

“Last year we introduced the Sports experience for our highly engaged sports audience, making it simpler for Roku users to watch sports programming,” Gidon Katz, President of Consumer Experience at Roku, said in a press release. “As we start the biggest sports season of the year, providing easy access to NFL games and content to our millions of users is a top priority for us. We look forward to fans immersing themselves within the NFL Zone and making it their destination to find NFL games.”

In addition to showing you which lives are live and which are coming up, NFL Zone also shows previews of weekly matchups, highlights, and gives you direct access to Roku’s NFL channel. (Roku calls apps “Channels.”)

One thing to note, however, is that while the NFL Zone will show you all sorts of things about live and upcoming games, you’ll still need a method by which to watch them, such as cable or streaming, or via NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube or YouTube TV.

“We are excited to partner with Roku to increase discoverability of NFL programming to football fans,” Hans Schroeder, NFL Executive Vice President of Media Distribution, said in the press release. “With the launch of the NFL Zone, Roku users can easily find the games they want to watch, from one place. We are thrilled to provide our fans with an excellent option to follow their favorite teams all season long.”