Apple, Amazon take lead over ESPN in NFL Sunday Ticket bidding - report
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Apple (AAPL
+1%) and Amazon.com (AMZN
+1%) have become front-runners to acquire the prized NFL Sunday Ticket out-of-market football broadcast package - acing out ESPN and Disney (NYSE:DIS) in the hunt, Sports Business Journal reports.
Disney is still in pursuit of the premium package with plans to run it on its ESPN+ service, but it's offering well below what Apple and Amazon have discussed, according to the report.
That would mean another key piece of highly valued pro football rights moving to streaming. Amazon Prime Video has become the exclusive home of Thursday Night Football.
And the NFL is likely to get more than $2 billion per year from the winning bidder for the Sunday Ticket rights, SBJ says; DirecTV (which still has rights through next season) currently pays an average of $1.5 billion per year, and clauses in CBS (PARA
+1.4%) and Fox's (FOX
+3%, FOXA
+2.5%) NFL contracts require that Sunday Ticket comes at a premium price.
DirecTV (in which AT&T (T
+3.5%) still has a 70% stake) is discussing ending up with a commercial license that would permit it to sell Sunday Ticket to restaurants and bars, the report says.