How much did Google pay to bring ‘NFL Sunday Ticket’ to YouTube for the 2023 season?
The National Football League will give YouTube exclusive rights to NFL Sunday Ticket, and the deal will reportedly cost Google two billion dollars.
The NFL has announced that they have given YouTube exclusive rights to NFL Sunday Ticket, which gives football fans across the country access to out-of-market games.
Terms of the agreement were not made public, but according to The Wall Street Journal, Google will pay the league approximately $2 billion.
NFL expands digital distribution
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said the deal was a way to distribute games digitally to a wider audience. The league launched Sunday Ticket in 1994, with DirecTV holding the rights for a price of some $1.5 billion each year.
The digital TV service’s contract expires after the current season, and it included rights for bars and other commercial establishments, which are not included in the Google deal. The league is looking for a separate arrangement for this license for another $200 million.
The NFL had been shopping for another platform for the service after news came out that DirecTV had been losing half a billion dollars a year due to Sunday Ticket.
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No need to subscribe to YouTube TV
The league’s contract with YouTube starts with the 2023 season. Sunday Ticket will be provided as an add-on bundle on YouTube TV. You don’t have to pay for a subscription to YouTube TV to watch the games- you can simply place an order for Sunday Ticket on YouTube Primetime Channels if you only want access to football action.
This is the second streaming service that the NFL has contracted in the past two years. They previously awarded exclusive rights to Thursday Night Football to Amazon Prime Video until the 2033 season for approximately $1 billion per season.