American Forces Network

Members of the American military serving overseas won’t be able to watch the NFC and AFC Championship Games on American Forces Network, thanks to the government shutdown.

American Forces Network, which had been scheduled to show both games, has confirmed that its programming is not available while the government is shut down.

Some members of the military will surely be able to find online streams of the game, but high-speed Internet access isn’t available everywhere. So many members of the military will be out of luck.

Stars and Stripes reported that American Forces Network has already received complaints from members of the military who were looking forward to watching Sunday’s games. There was also confusion as to why AFN had to go off the air, as it stayed on during the last government shutdown, in 2013.

If the government remains shut down in two weeks, we would hope that a solution could be found to allow American Forces Network to show the Super Bowl.

UPDATE 5:27 p.m. ET: Per the NFL, troops with access to USO Centers will be able to see the games through the NFL’s Game Pass feature. The league is working on finding ways for troops without access to USO Centers to see the games.