YouTube Is Close to Securing NFL Sunday Ticket Now That Apple Has Backed Out

The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and a number of other publications have all reported that Google is now the front-runner in discussions for NFL Sunday Ticket and that an agreement may be completed this week. One of the largest TV packages in all of the sports, NFL Sunday Ticket, is looking for a new broadcast partner. Every week, there are roughly 13 live "out of the market" NFL games; in other words, everything that isn't on ESPN, Amazon, or your local broadcast channel. In order to be the sole platform to broadcast every NFL game, DirecTV, a satellite service, was the package's home for many years. DirecTV is fortunate to keep its lights on despite suffering significant customer losses and AT&T's spinoff of the struggling satellite operator solely to wipe it off the books. All the major streamers have shown up to have a look since Sunday Ticket will cost someone billions of dollars and won't be returning to DirecTV. The Sunday Ticket negotiations involved representatives from Disney, Google, Amazon, and Apple. Because it spent $1 billion a year to exclusively license Thursday Night Football for Amazon Prime Video, Amazon is currently the market leader in online NFL content. Through ESPN, which also provides all the standard sports news coverage and hosts Monday Night Football, Disney is a significant NFL partner as well. While Apple signed a similar "every game" agreement with Major League Soccer earlier this year for a total cost of $2.5 billion for 10 years of programming, Google and Apple don't have any significant NFL packages. Apple was apparently the front-runner in the Sunday Ticket contract at one point but withdrew owing to the NFL's price limits and the prohibitive price. The fact that Disney is reportedly also out of the running puts Google in the lead. According to a New York Times source, Google is thinking about paying $2.5 billion annually for the package, which would be $1 billion more than DirecTV. Don't make any jokes about dead Google products in the comments because most of these contracts are for ten years. It's challenging to consider Google's YouTube to be a streamer on par with Disney+, Apple TV, and Amazon Prime Video. All of those other companies create their own premium content, but YouTube has given up on producing original video in the Hollywood way. YouTube does, however, have a fantastic cord-cutting option in the form of YouTube TV, which is just all the traditional cable TV channels like CNN, ESPN, MTV, and your local networks broadcast via the Internet. [caption id="attachment_74628" align="aligncenter" width="1200"] NFL[/caption] The Sunday Ticket package's online appearance and its affiliation with a particular YouTube section are both unknowns. The DirecTV package required you to pay close to $300 per year for a large bundle that included every NFL game. The majority of sports fans would adore an al-a-carte option that would allow you to pay only for the games of your preferred out-of-market team, but it is probably just a pipe dream. A similar priced add-on plan for YouTube TV, which is already $65 per month, would be the most conventional choice. In an effort to compete with traditional cable, YouTube TV currently offers a number of add-on packages, including one called "Sports Plus" that includes the NFL Network as well as many other sports-specific channels and the live highlight channel NFL RedZone. When Sunday Ticket goes online, there's a reason why you shouldn't anticipate a discount. The NFL's contracts with CBS and Fox "contained wording that required Sunday Ticket have a premium price in order to not steal too many eyes away from the local market Sunday afternoon games acquired by the broadcast networks," according to a previous report from CNBC. That eliminates the majority of the exciting alternatives, including a tier sponsored by Google ads. According to a rumor, Apple planned to include Sunday Ticket in the $6.99 monthly fee for Apple TV+. That sounds like it goes against the pricing agreements the NFL made to its other broadcast partners, but it would have likely sold a lot of Apple hardware and brought Apple TV into the homes of a lot more people. [caption id="attachment_74627" align="aligncenter" width="1200"] YouTube[/caption] The Sunday Ticket bundle wasn't worth what the NFL was asking for, according to the NYT report, and Apple terminated serious negotiations about a prospective contract. There are unquestionably legitimate concerns regarding Sunday Ticket's value to the broadcast partner. According to that same article, 1-2 million subscribers of DirecTV are currently paying for the Sunday Ticket bundle. For a $1.5 billion per year transaction, that would be a total revenue of around $600 million at the standard $300 per year pricing (plus some people receive discounts). Even if the overall financial situation is more convoluted than that due to factors like sports bar pricing, Sunday Ticket is still a loss-making venture even before the price is increased by an additional billion dollars. [caption id="attachment_68084" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] YouTube[/caption] A deal must be reached soon because DirecTV's Sunday Ticket agreement expires at the conclusion of this season.