NFL Sunday Ticket has been a page of football fan’s lives since 1994.
If you don’t live in your favorite team’s town anymore, or if your local TV didn’t carry a game you wanted to see, then NFL Sunday Ticket had your back, as the service carried all the games produced by CBS (VIAB) – Get Viacom Inc. Class B Report and Fox (FOXA) – Get Fox Corporation Class A Report.
For years now, rumors have been circulating that one of the major streaming companies would pick up the exclusive rights to NFL Sunday Ticket, and according to Sports Business Journal, it seems like now there might be some truth to those rumors.
The Satellite TV provider DirecTV, which is still controlled, but now owned by AT&T (T) – Get AT&T Inc. Report, has been the home to NFL Sunday Ticket since the service launched, and in 2014 it renewed its deals through next year, paying the NFL $1.5 billion per year until 2022. (Securing this package was key to AT&T acquiring DirecTV in 2015.) But with the deal set to expire this year, many of the major streaming companies are making a play, and are aggressively outbidding DirectTV.
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Which Player Might Get NFL Sunday Ticket?
Reportedly both Apple (AAPL) – Get Apple Inc. Report and Amazon (AMZN) – Get Amazon.com, Inc. Report are offering up to $2 billion per year for Sunday Ticket.
Disney (DIS) – Get Walt Disney Company Report, always eager to own the rights to iconic American culture, is also in the mix, but so far their bid is said to be well below what its competitors are offering.
Amazon currently has the rights to “Thursday Night Football” and Disney’s ESPN has “Monday Night Football.” Apple does not currently have a deal with the NFL, but it is reportedly looking for a senior editorial manager of live sports. The NFL is also looking to sell some of its media operations, including its mobile operations, in the Sunday Ticket deal, which is said to be complicating the negotiations.
The exact details of how the deal might go down are unknown and are presumably still being worked out. But Awful Announcing reported that “CBS and Fox have clauses in their NFL contracts mandating that Sunday Ticket can only be offered at a premium price, meaning that it likely will carry a similar price tag with a new partner as it does with DirecTV.”
So with that in mind, it is quite unlikely that the service will automatically come with your existing Amazon Prime, Apple+ or ESPN+ subscription, and will instead likely be an additional add-on, in the same way that last summer you pay extra to watch certain Disney+ films like “Black Widow” while they were still in theaters.
NFL Sunday Ticket TV currently costs $293.96 for the season, or $73.49 per month for four months. So look for a similar price point wherever it ends up.
DirecTV To Retain Some Rights (Maybe)
If the inflation is making you tighten up your budget, then don’t worry too much about paying more for NFL Sunday Ticket.
DirecTV is negotiating for the right to a commercial license that will allow the company to sell NFL Sunday Ticket to restaurants and bars. It’s a license many sports bars are glad to pay for in order to get sports fans in seats, so if you’re used to hitting your favorite chicken wing spot every Sunday night to catch a game, not much is likely to change for you beyond the logo you see in the corner. But, as ever, the amount you spend on chicken wings is entirely up to you.
