All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes.

The wait is almost over! The 2024 NFL season officially returns on Thursday (Sept. 5).

Kicking things off: The Kansas City Chiefs vs. Baltimore Ravens game airing live on NBC and streaming on Peacock.

The Chiefs will host the Ravens at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City on Thursday, and Taylor Swift isn’t the only music star gearing up for the season: Megan Thee Stallion is joining in the NFL celebration. The Houston rapper debuted a Pepsi commercial with Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce on Thursday to mark the season kickoff.

Keep reading for a roundup of ways to watch and stream tonight’s Chiefs vs. Ravens and other games for NFL kickoff weekend.

Where to Stream the Kansas City Chiefs vs. Baltimore Ravens Game for Free

The Chiefs vs. Ravens game will broadcast live on NBC and stream on Peacock on Thursday. Coverage starts at 7 p.m. ET/4 p.m. PT. Kickoff is scheduled for 8:20 p.m. ET/5:20 p.m. PT.

If you don’t have live TV or enough time to buy a digital antenna, you can stream the Chiefs vs. Ravens game on Fubo, Hulu + Live TV, Sling TV, DirecTV Stream, Peacock and NFL+.

To livestream the game for free, subscribe to Fubo or Hulu + Live TV. These are just a couple of the streamers that offer free trials and discounts in most cases.

For example, Fubo’s streaming plans are $30 off just in time for the NFL season. The plan includes 201 channels, DVR and streaming from multiple screens for $49.99/month after a free week trial.

DirecTV customers no longer have access to ABC and ESPN, but the streamer still carries NBC and other local networks. And there’s a free trial for five days. Plans start at $49.99/month for a limited time.

Sling TV doesn’t offer a free trial, but you can join at a discount and maximize your gameday binge session. With Sling Orange + Sports Extra, you can watch every ESPN channel, including SEC Network and ACC Network, plus simulcast games on ABC (through ESPN3).

Want more sports channels? Subscribe to Sling Blue with Sports Extra to add channels such as NFL Network, FS1, Big Ten Network and NFL RedZone, along with local NBC and Fox affiliates in select markets. Join with Sling’s new Season Pass offer and save $92 when you prepay for four months in advance.

Spanish speakers can watch or stream the Chiefs vs. Ravens game live on Telemundo and Peacock. For international streaming, use ExpressVPN to access several platforms from anywhere around the globe.

How to Watch the Kansas City Chiefs vs. Baltimore Raven on Peacock

Peacock offers everything from sports to reality TV, and must-watch NBC programs. Thursday’s Ravens vs. Chiefs game will stream live on Peacock along with Friday’s Green Bay Packers vs. Philadelphia Eagles and a Sunday Night Football matchup between the Los Angeles Rams vs. Detroit Lions.

If you’re looking for a Peacock promo code, we’ve found a limited deal online. There’s not much time left, but if you hurry, you can score a major discount on Peacock: $4.99/month for four months. Use code TGIF to save 30% off Peacock. The promo ends on Friday. Without the discount code, Peacock’s monthly plans start at $7.99 for the basic package and $13.99 for live access to NBC.

Shopping for game day gear? This NFL-branded apparel collection is perfect for football lovers, and for Swifties, NFL friendship bracelets are back in stock.

All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes.

The limited eight-episode drama series Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist, starring Kevin Hart, is making its debut on Peacock on Thursday (Sept. 5).

The series is set in Atlanta and is based on true events that took place on Oct. 26, 1970, the night Muhammad Ali made his famous return to the ring against Jerry Quarry. According to People, the fight was not only a significant event in both sports and culture, but also a place where celebrities and notable figures would come together from all over the world.

The cast includes Kevin Hart, Samuel L. Jackson, Taraji P. Henson, Don Cheadle, and Terrence Howard. With guest stars including Chloe Bailey, Marsha Stephanie Blake, Dexter Darden, Lori Harvey, and Sinqua Walls. This series is Executive Produced by Kevin Hart, Will Packer, Sabrina Wind, Bryan Smiley, Mike Stein, Conal Byrne, Carrie Lieberman, Jeff Keating, Lars Jacobson, Erika L. Johnson, and Mike Daniels. Episodes 101, 102, 107 and 108 were directed and executive produced by Craig Brewer.

Shaye Ogbonna, known for The Chi and God’s Country, serves as the creator, writer, showrunner, and executive producer.

In a recent interview on the Today show, Chloe Bailey and Lori Harvey shared their excitement about being a part of this series. Bailey plays the role of ‘Lena Mosley,’ a girl who is a part of the heist. “I had to pinch myself every time I was going to set and it was just really remarkable sharing the screen… I can’t wait for everyone to see such a great story being brought to live with such a great cast,” she said. Harvey is making her acting debut as ‘Lola Falana’ in the series, a popstar who is drawn into the chaos. “It’s very surreal,” she said.

Keep scrolling for ways to stream Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist on Peacock.

How to Watch Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist on Peacock

Peacock will debut the first three episodes of Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist exclusively on Peacock starting today (Sept. 5). The remaining five episodes will be released one at a time every Thursday.

Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist is now streaming on Peacock starting at $7.99/month. You can get it for just $4/99 for 4 months with the CODE: TGIF. The offer ends on Friday, Sept. 6.

Are you subscribed? If you’re not subscribed, plans start at $7.99 for Peacock Premium and $13.99 for the commercial-free Peacock Premium Plus.

Peacock offers a student discount which drops the price down to just $1.99/month. Click here for more Peacock streaming deals.

Peacock also gives you access to a ton of original shows, movies and more. Some of the exclusives offered include Bel-Air,  Love Undercover, In the Know, Apple Never Falls, The Traitors, Ted, Wolf Like Me, Twisted Metaland Poker Face. If you’re a Bravo fan, Vanderpump Rules, Below Deck, Summer House, The Real Housewives and other Bravo hits are streaming on Peacock, along with movies such as Kung Fu Panda 4, Back to Black, Oppenheimer, Lisa Frankenstein, Migration, Five Nights at Freddy’s and The Super Mario Bros. Movie.

Spotify has defeated a long-running lawsuit that claimed Eminem’s music was streamed illegally “billions” of times on the platform, winning a ruling that sharply criticized the rapper’s publisher for filing the case in the first place.

Eminem’s publisher, Eight Mile Style, sued Spotify in 2019, claiming the streamer had made hundreds of the rapper’s songs available without proper licenses. That included mega-hits like “Lose Yourself,” which has been streamed more than 1 billion times on the service.

But in a decision last month, a federal judge dismissed those accusations entirely, ruling that Eight Mile had essentially manufactured a lawsuit for its own gain. The publisher knew for years that its songs were being played on Spotify, the judge wrote, but had chosen to do nothing in order to build a more lucrative legal case against the streamer.

“Eight Mile Style was not a hapless victim,” Judge Aleta A. Trauger wrote. “While Spotify’s handling of composer copyrights appears to have been seriously flawed, any right to recover damages based on those flaws belongs to those innocent rights holders who were genuinely harmed, not ones who, like Eight Mile Style, had every opportunity to set things right and simply chose not to do so for no apparent reason, other than that being the victim of infringement pays better than being an ordinary licensor.”

An attorney for Eight Mile Style did not immediately return a request for comment on the decision. Eminem himself was not involved in the case.

At the center of the long legal battle is the chaotic system that governed streaming royalties in the U.S. for much of the 2010s, in which streamers like Spotify often failed to pay the proper rights holders. That messy situation was mostly fixed by the 2018 enactment of the federal Music Modernization Act (MMA), which created a single blanket license for streamers to pay.

The MMA largely immunized streamers like Spotify from lawsuits over past misdeeds, wiping the slate clean if they paid for the blanket license and complied with other requirements. But a year after the statute was enacted, Eight Mile sued anyway — arguing, among other things, that the landmark law itself was unconstitutional because it violated due process and negated the company’s copyrights.

In her ruling last month, Judge Trauger entirely avoided those lofty constitutional questions about the MMA, saying she would leave them “for a future case involving an appropriate plaintiff.” But like other aspects of her ruling, she suggested that “teeing up a constitutional showdown” had been another “strategic” decision by Eight Mile aimed at securing a bigger payout.

“The MMA framework was the culmination of what may have been one of the most high-stakes policymaking efforts in the history of copyright, and whether that framework survives has implications for the economy of music that go far beyond the rights of any individual artist, even a popular one like Eminem,” the judge wrote. “A lawsuit that imperiled the MMA could cost Spotify a great deal more than any one artist could ever claim — and could, potentially, justify a more generous settlement.”

In technical terms, Judge Trauger’s ruling cited the legal doctrine of equitable estoppel, which bars litigants from behaving unfairly to win advantage in court cases. In applying that rule to Eight Mile, she said the publisher “improperly chose the cultivation of infringement damages over the proper functioning of the copyright system.”

Eight Mile clearly knew that some of its most valuable IP was being used by Spotify, the judge wrote, and the entire lawsuit could have been avoided if Eight Mile had “simply sent a single, clear cease-and-desist letter.”  But she said the company instead “simply allowed its rights to be violated.”

“If Eight Mile Style had come forward to contest the status quo, it would have brought this situation to a much quicker end, but it did not,” Judge Trauger wrote. “The only plausible reason for this course of action is that … allowing infringement to continue on a large scale is more economically beneficial to the purported victim than the licit streaming economy would be.”

Even if Eight Mile’s accusations against Spotify had been legally valid, the judge ruled that the damages wouldn’t have been Spotify’s to pay. Instead, she ruled that the liability would have belonged to Kobalt, because the company had signed a licensing deal with Spotify for the Eminem songs at issue and had agreed to indemnify the streamer for any such legal problems.

As it was, that question was largely moot because the judge had mostly rejected Eight Mile’s lawsuit. But she ruled that Kobalt would likely need to cover Spotify’s legal expenses incurred in defending the lawsuit — likely a sizeable sum after five years of litigation. That issue will be subject to future proceedings.

A representative for Spotify did not immediately return requests for comment. A representative for Kobalt declined to comment.

The Contenders is a midweek column that looks at artists aiming for the top of the Billboard charts, and the strategies behind their efforts. This week, for the Billboard Hot 100 dated Sept. 14, we look at a race that’s been dominated by one song for about two months now – and what songs, if any, may be closing the gap in the near future. 

Shaboozey, “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” (American Dogwood/EMPIRE/Magnolia Music): Well, he narrowly lost out on Billboard’s official Song of the Summer to Post Malone and Morgan Wallen with “I Had Some Help” — another week or two and that race might’ve gotten really interesting – but Shaboozey can content himself that he’s held on at No. 1 for yet another week on the Hot 100. That’s eight weeks total now for “A Bar Song,” marking the longest run of 2024, and the longest for anyone since (again) Morgan Wallen, whose “Last Night” reigned for twice that long in 2023.  

And it doesn’t appear to be fading much yet, either. It remains in the top five on Streaming Songs and atop atop both Digital Song Sales (12 weeks) and Radio Songs (five weeks). Its radio dominance also includes six weeks thus far atop the Country Airplay chart – one week away from passing Carrie Underwood’s “Jesus, Take the Wheel” for the longest-reigning country career-establishing No. 1 (defined as an artist’s first Country Airplay entry as a lead artist, or their initial song promoted to country radio) in the chart’s history. As long as its cross-platform dominance holds strong — it’s also been No. 1 the past two weeks on Adult Pop Airplay – it will remain a contender for the top spot; another artist is gonna have to really rise up to take the crown from it. 

Sabrina Carpenter, “Taste,” “Please Please Please” & “Espresso” (Island): Could Sabrina Carpenter be the artist to do that? She certainly has strength in numbers going for her: Carpenter holds the Nos. 2-4 spots on the Hot 100 this week (dated Sept. 7), as her Short n’ Sweet album conquers the Billboard 200 albums chart. Long-running hits “Please Please Please” (No. 1 peak) and “Espresso” (No. 3) shoot back up to Nos. 3 and 4 on the chart, respectively, while just above them, the brand-new “Taste” bows at No. 2, thanks in large part to a spicy new music video with TV and film star Jenna Ortega as its co-lead.  

All three should be strong performers for some time. “Taste” remains atop essentially all major streaming charts – including Apple Music’s real-time listing, Spotify’s Daily Top Songs USA and YouTube’s Trending Music – over a week after its release, while “Please Please Please” climbs to No. 1 on Pop Airplay and “Espresso” holds at No. 3 on the overall Radio Songs chart. The biggest issue with Carpenter claiming the Hot 100’s No. 1 spot soon might be a kind of vote-splitting effect — particularly on the airwaves, where programmers simply have more songs of hers right now than they know what to do with.  

“Taste” has momentum on its side, and is already nearing the 50-position Radio Songs listing. If it can pick up enough airplay before its streaming totals really start to drop, it could close the gap with “A Bar Song” before too long. In the meantime, an extra boost from Carpenter would help – like, say, with a memorable performance at the MTV Video Music Awards, where she’s scheduled to perform next Wednesday (Sept. 11).  

Lady Gaga & Bruno Mars, “Die With a Smile” (Streamline/Interscope/Atlantic/ICLG): Meanwhile, momentum has hardly sagged at all for the new Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars duet – which falls to No. 6 on the Hot 100 this week thanks to the Sabrina surge, but holds in the top three on both Digital Song Sales and Streaming Songs, and is already bounding up Radio Songs, jumping 45-36 this week. And despite falling on Streaming Songs post-Short n’ Sweet, it’s actually up in total streams for the week, and even hits No. 1 on both Billboard Global charts.  

Will the song be in position to take over the Hot 100’s top spot when the Gaga-starring Joker: Folie a Deux – which “Smile” does not appear to be officially connected to, but which it does have some spiritual kinship with via its title – hits American theaters in October? Will it even have to wait that long? 

Billie Eilish, “Birds of a Feather” (Darkroom/Interscope/ICLG) & Chappell Roan, “Good Luck Babe” (KRA/Amusement/Island/Republic): Both of these now-long-running (if relatively slower-building) hits seem to have fallen behind in the race a bit, as they’ve been passed by the big-debuting “Taste” and “Smile.” But both are still definitely in the mix, with both holding in the top 10 on Streaming Songs, and “Birds” having reached the top 10 on Radio Songs, with “Babe” likely to join it there next week. The VMAs next week may also hold bump potential for both: Eilish is not performing but is a four-time nominee, while Roan is making her debut on the VMAs stage and is also up for four awards.