The NFL’s longtime, exclusive partnership with its Sunday Ticket product and DirecTV could be moving to a new outlet. Daniel Kaplan of The Athletic confirmed another report from Joe Flint and Miles Kruppa of the Wall Street Journal that Google’s YouTube service is the new front-runner to land the NFL’s method for broadcasting out-of-market games.
The deal is not done, but both sources noted that another suitor for the Sunday Ticket package, Apple, dropped out of the running. No specific costs for the package for Google/YouTube or how much it would cost subscribers is known yet, but the price tag for the rights to Sunday Ticket is expected to cost over $2 billion per NFL season.
Fans have long complained about the monopoly DirecTV held. For Lions fans living outside the regular broadcast areas, they had to subscribe to all of DirecTV just to access Detroit games. YouTubeTV currently carries the NFL Network and is available to anyone with an internet connection.
As both reports note, there are still a lot of loose strings to get tied together before a deal is done. But for fans who have been forced to subscribe to DirecTV just to pay for NFL Sunday Ticket — and there are fans of all teams all over the country who fit that bill — the potential of a new plan should be a very welcome idea.