Google secures rights to air NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube TV
YouTube TV has secured the exclusive rights to air the very popular NFL Sunday ticket, the league announced Thursday morning. The deal is set to take place starting next season.
The decision to now rely on a streaming service rather than satellite marks the end of a 28-year run by DirecTV. It hasn’t yet been announced how much more the Sunday Ticket add-on will cost, but DirecTV’s price of $294 can establish a good barometer.
Also unclear is how much Google is paying for these rights. CNBC has reported a seven-year, $2 billion deal, while The New York Times reported that number reached $2.5 billion over seven years. It sounds like the deal will be for seven years at around that $2 billion mark.
This deal makes sense especially when considering the array of issues DirecTV had this past season regarding Sunday Ticket. During the first three weeks, DirecTV seemed to have a problem airing all the games, with customers complaining that they were unable to watch certain games or even log into the app.
It got so bad that DirecTV actually issued refunds to users during the first two weeks of the season. Fans were obviously very upset, and DirecTV rightfully so took a lot of heat for it. It’s one day a week for 17 weeks, for a company as big as DirecTV managing that should be no problem.
But for whatever reason, they were unable to meet these expectations and the NFL wasted no time finding a replacement.
I, for one, think it’s a good thing for the NFL. The world is headed in the direction of streaming as more and more people start to ditch cable. Although there may be some who still haven’t adopted the ways of streaming, those individuals are starting to become few and far between and before long we will be talking about cable like we do Blockbuster.
Those fans may also be in luck if the NFL follows its pattern of allowing local bars to play Sunday Ticket games similar to what it did with its deal with Amazon.
I personally don’t care how I watch my football. Like seriously, I could be trapped in a cave below the ground but if I’m watching football, I’ll be happy. I think the NFL just wants to try and get football into as many houses as possible and this deal should help accomplish that.
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