NFL Sunday Ticket still likely headed to streaming, with fall decision ahead
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Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) have seemed like front-runners to mark a streaming takeover of the lucrative NFL Sunday Ticket package of out-of-market game broadcast rights currently on DirecTV - and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell isn't doing anything Friday to dissuade that notion.
Talking on CNBC, Goodell said "I clearly believe weâll be moving to a streaming service," adding that such a move would make the games available to more viewers than Sunday Ticket's longtime setup on satellite, which has always called for a commitment to specialized equipment installation.
A decision is coming in the fall, Goodell indicated.
Two weeks ago, the NFL was still working through Sunday Ticket bids from Apple (AAPL), Amazon.com (AMZN) and ESPN (DIS) - but the league appears to be pursuing a more complicated mix of assets and partnership talks rather than a simple rights hand-off.
And there's time yet, as DirecTV (in which AT&T (T) still holds a 70% stake) holds the Sunday Ticket rights through the upcoming season. DirecTV paid $1.5B annually for rights, and now CNBC says the league wants more than $2B a year.
Sunday Ticket has long been a premium add-on for football fans, offering a large package of out-of-market games for fees ranging well over $100 per season to satellite subscribers. While it seems to be headed to a streamer, it won't become a cheap loss leader for any of the hotly competitive services to add subscribers: CNBC previously noted that the NFL's deals with CBS and Fox mandated a premium price (currently about $300) for Sunday Ticket, in order to maintain some viewership for local-market games.
It's been a year since the NFL wrapped up a giant $100B-plus package of rights renewals that largely kept the football in legacy media's red zone - sealing deals with Disney (DIS), Fox (FOX) (FOXA), NBCUniversal (CMCSA), Paramount Global (PARA) and Amazon (AMZN), and leaving Sunday Ticket as the last unresolved piece.
In April, Puck News reported Sunday Ticket was already Apple's (AAPL) to lose, saying the deal was done and kept quiet at Apple's request.