YouTube’s NFL ‘Sunday Ticket’ deal is a win for traditional TV networks, too – here’s why

The National Football League had a streaming service in thoughts when it was in search of a brand new residence for the rights to its “Sunday Ticket” subscription recreation bundle. 

The league received its desired end result in a cope with Google‘s YouTube. Traditional TV networks received what they needed out of it, too. 

Beginning subsequent season, “Sunday Ticket” will likely be provided in two methods by YouTube: both as an add-on to its YouTube TV service, a digital TV bundle that mirrors the standard pay-TV bundle, or a la carte by YouTube’s Primetime Channels. 

YouTube is paying about $2 billion yearly for residential rights over the following seven years, CNBC reported. The course of concluded this week after months of negotiations with potential winners like Apple, Amazon and Disney, which operates ESPN streaming service ESPN+.

While pricing hasn’t been decided, customers will doubtless get extra bang for his or her buck by subscribing to YouTubeTV and including on “Sunday Ticket,” which exhibits out-of-market NFL video games on Sunday afternoons. It’ll additionally give them entry to almost all NFL video games in a single place. Google’s YouTube TV bundle consists of broadcast stations like CBS, Fox and NBC. Fellow tech giants Apple and Amazon do not present an identical bundle providing with broadcast or pay-TV networks, akin to ESPN and NFL Network.

Sports, and significantly the NFL, have lengthy been thought-about the glue holding the standard TV bundle collectively. Sports networks, and those who supply reside video games, appeal to a number of the highest charges from pay-TV operators, they usually rating a number of the highest scores. The NFL makes giant sums for the airing of reside video games.

For this purpose, executives at longstanding broadcast and pay-TV networks, who declined to to be named as a result of they weren’t permitted to speak publicly, discovered the cope with YouTube a positive end result over Apple or Amazon getting the bundle. 

YouTube and the NFL did not instantly remark.

Paramount‘s CBS and Fox broadcast weekly Sunday afternoon video games. Comcast‘s NBC is the house of “Sunday Night Football,” and Disney, which owns ESPN and ABC, holds the rights to “Monday Night Football.” 

Each has paid hefty sums for these rights. Last yr, collectively, the 4 agreed to pay greater than $100 billion over the course of 11-year-long packages to air NFL video games. 

For networks like NBC, CBS and ESPN, they’re concurrently airing NFL video games on their fledgling streaming platforms for the viewers that has turned away from the pay-TV bundle. 

All of these video games can be found by Google’s YouTube TV bundle, except for “Thursday Night Football,” which now streams solely on Amazon Prime.

“YouTube in many ways is a very unique and interesting platform,” Dhruv Prasad, the NFL’s senior vp of media technique and strategic investments, stated on a name with media this week, “because we have chosen a partner that actually supports, in many ways, our existing distribution with Sunday afternoon and night, and Monday night. We actually think this is a model where this will result in a real benefit with existing partners.”

While offers with conventional operators are wildly profitable for the NFL, the league has been open about wanting extra streaming companions. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell stated lengthy earlier than the end result of the negotiations the league noticed a streaming accomplice as the way forward for “Sunday Ticket,” which has solely been provided by satellite-TV operator DirecTV since 1994. 

Although YouTube is streaming solely, it gives a bundle that retains the TV bundle alive – by paying comparable charges as typical distributors, which has in flip precipitated a spike within the value of subscriptions. YouTube TV had greater than 5.3 million subscribers as of the third quarter, placing it above its opponents like Disney’s Hulu Live TV+, Fubo TV and Dish’s Sling, in line with knowledge from MoffettNathanson. 

“This is a win for YouTube TV as it serves a larger goal for them getting more subscribers. And in the end, it helps a package of linear channels,” stated sports activities media guide Pat Crakes, noting YouTube additionally secured the rights “at a good price,” to assist them bolster their streaming service. 

Adding one other NFL property to the equation to make a TV bundle stickier with clients is a optimistic for networks, executives advised CNBC. 

The streaming business, significantly for legacy media corporations, has most lately been below stress. While corporations raced to kind and bulk up their very own companies, trailing Netflix, rabid competitors is now weighing on subscriber counts, and content material prices are hovering. Although streaming stays a precedence, some media CEOs are rethinking how a lot content material to remove from the standard bundle and placed on streaming.