NFL Considering Three Offers For Sunday Ticket, DirecTV is Out

The National Football League (NFL) has partnered with DirecTV to offer out-of-market games since the satellite company was formed in 1994. That partnership will end after the 2022/2023 season as the package is expected to move to a streaming platform.

The NFL is considering offers from Amazon, Apple, and Disney for the rights to its NFL Sunday Ticket package.

The deal is thought to be somewhere in the realm of $2 billion per year, far surpassing the last rights deal which sat at $1.5 billion per year and was held by DirecTV. The satellite TV provider has decided against bidding on the package this time around. It has broadcast Sunday Ticket Games since the package was first launched in 1994, though at first, it was not an exclusive deal.

The NFL’s Sunday ticket is an optional package on DirecTV that allows viewers to watch out-of-market games that are not broadcasted nationally, such as Monday Night Football.

The NFL reportedly wants the buyer to take a minority stake in NFL Media, which includes the NFL Network, NFL Redzone, and NFL.com. That may be a sticking point for Apple and Amazon because the two tech companies do not have any connection to legacy TV and are pushing their streaming platforms. Disney, by contrast, owns multiple legacy pay and terrestrial television stations, adding minority stakes in the NFL Network and NFL Redzone is thought to be less of a hurdle for the media conglomerate.

Further complicating matters are the NFL’s connections and agreements with its other broadcast partners. The broadcast deals the NFL signed with CBS and Fox require that the NFL charges a premium price for the Sunday Ticket package, to lessen the number of eyes it will take off of their local game broadcasts. That means the streaming companies will be unable to lower the cost of the package significantly or include it with their streaming platforms.

The Sunday Ticket on DirecTV typically costs $300 a season. By contrast, Major League Baseball’s (MLB) MLB.TV package which similarly offers out-of-market games costs $115 per year. The National Basketball Association’s (NBA) version, called League Pass, costs only $99 a year. Considering that the NFL season is only 17 games long, compared to 162 and 82 for the MLB and NBA respectively, Sunday Ticket has a very high premium price per game compared to similar services.

While the Sunday Ticket has reportedly been a financial loser for the company regularly, DirecTV is not opposed to staying involved with the Sunday Ticket in some capacity. Two people familiar with the situation told CNBC that the company is willing to work with the next rights holder. DirecTV is, they said, interested in acting as a pass-through for the company, allowing DirecTV subscribers to continue to purchase Sunday Ticket through DirecTV while passing on the fees to the new rights holder.

This would have the dual benefit of reducing the burden on broadband networks and enable the companies to reach customers without broadband internet access, while also limiting the damage to DirecTV’s subscriber base who may leave if they stop offering the Sunday Ticket package.

DirecTV also has existing partnerships with bars and restaurants around the nation, who use the Sunday Ticket package as a way to entice fans of out-of-market teams into their establishments.

Current subscribers do not have to worry about this season, DirecTV remains the exclusive provider of Sunday Ticket until the end of this season.