We may soon find out just how valuable out of market NFL games are. John Ourand of Sports Business Journal reports that NFL Sunday Ticket is likely to hit the open market in the next round of NFL media negotiations.
“DirecTV pays an average of $1.5 billion per year for an exclusive deal that ends after the 2022 regular season,” Ourand writes. “The NFL currently is negotiating a new deal, and sources say that DirecTV has showed tepid interest, at best. Right now, it seems virtually certain that DirecTV will not have the out-of-market package exclusively. Sources say it is likely that DirecTV will take a pass on the package altogether.”
The future of NFL Sunday Ticket is certainly going to be interesting. Is the NFL considering one broadcast and one streaming partner for out of market games? Is it considering splitting the games in half and forcing fans to pay for two different packages to get every game?
Plenty of suitors are expected to step forward and Ourand reports that all of the expected streaming giants are ready to bid. The NFL already has a relationship with Amazon. Disney could use an NFL Sunday Ticket ticket deal for ESPN+ to lure a Super Bowl to ABC in the event it is shut out on picking up a second TV package. Other possibilities include Peacock and Apple TV+.
Jay Rigdon of Awful Announcing floats an interesting idea for a landing spot. DirecTV has always marketed itself as a cable alternative. Could NFL Sunday Ticket end up at a 21st century cable alternative like YouTubeTV? The service did add a premium sports tier last year that includes the Red Zone channel.
Whoever ends up with NFL Sunday Ticket, the only sure thing is probably that the price is going to skyrocket. ESPN pays $2 billion for Monday Night Football alone. Sure, that price also gets the network wall-to-wall highlights, the NFL Draft, and the Pro Bowl, but even all of that should cost considerably less than every single out-of-market game and something like NFL Red Zone.
