YouTube Purchases Rights to NFL Sunday Ticket
After reports surfaced Wednesday that the sale of the NFL Sunday Ticket package was nearing completion, the league made it official on Thursday with the announcement that Google’s YouTube has acquired the service’s broadcasting rights.
As previously reported by The New York Times, the deal is expected to be for $2.5 billion per year, a substantial increase from the $1.5 billion DirecTV had been paying.
"We're excited to bring NFL Sunday Ticket to YouTube TV and YouTube Primetime Channels and usher in a new era of how fans across the United States watch and follow the NFL," NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said in the league’s press release. “For a number of years we have been focused on increased digital distribution of our games and this partnership is yet another example of us looking towards the future and building the next generation of NFL fans.”
NFL Sunday Ticket is an out-of-market sports package which broadcasts NFL regular-season games unavailable on local affiliates. The new deal brings the package into the streaming world for the first time after spending years on satellite television. The length of the multiyear contract is currently unknown.
YouTube will stream the package as a subscription service via both YouTube TV, as an add-on package, and YouTube Primetime channels. Sunday Ticket will be offered as a premium service to those subscribers at a cost that is similar to what DirecTV currently charges. DirecTV currently has approximately 1.5 million Sunday Ticket subscribers.
In July, YouTube TV had more than five million subscribers and trial users of the product, which costs $64.99 a month.
