YouTube expected to beat Apple to NFL Sunday Ticket

Apple TV+ is now unlikely to stream NFL Sunday Ticket as a new report says Google and YouTube may sign a deal, possibly as soon as Wednesday.

The protracted negotiations over streaming rights to the National Football League's sports package had been expected to continue into 2023. Rivals including Amazon and ESPN had reportedly expressed interest, but at one point it appeared that Apple TV+ was the front runner.

Now, however, the Wall Street Journal reports that a deal is likely to be made with YouTube. Citing unspecified sources familiar with the discussions, the publication says that the agreement could be signed as soon as Wednesday, December 21, 2022.

No details of what period YouTube may have the streaming rights, nor of what it's paying for them, are yet known. However, DirecTV currently pays $1.5 billion per year for Sunday Ticket.

Apple may not have been beaten by YouTube solely in financial terms, however. In October 2022, it was reported that Apple wanted more flexibility than the NFL was offering.

"We weren't interested in [just] buying sports rights," Apple's Eddy Cue said in a separate talk at the Paley Center for Media. "There's all kinds of capabilities that we're going to be able to do together because we have everything together."

"And so if I have a great idea," he continued, "I don't have to think about, OK, well, my contract or the deal of interest will allow this."

Apple TV+ has already transformed Friday Night Baseball to bring sports fans more than they used to get on network TV. Also, Apple is believed to have wanted worldwide rights to Sunday Ticket, where the NFL has previously made US-only deals.

Sunday Ticket's core appeal is that it shows out-of-market sports, so fans can watch games that are not available on their local affiliate stations.

4 Comments

neverindoubt 16 Years · 120 comments

About 2 years ago

NYT is reporting that Google will pay ~$2.5 billion/year, or $1b more than DTV was paying.

All the other NFL rights deals that start next season go through 2033. I’d expect this one to go that long too.

Lots of confusion that the NFL "wouldn’t give" Apple what they wanted (flexibility, ability to charge a low price, etc.). It was more that they "couldn’t give” on those terms because of other rights contracts. ST is required to be premium priced so as not to cannibalize CBS & Fox, who are together paying ~$4 billion/year in the next deal.

danox 11 Years · 3442 comments

Good hopefully the CEO won’t be interested in throwing money at sports or content creation for much longer get into Web Services, Apple stop wasting time on profit less exercises it is time to further disrupt your competition Google, Microsoft, and Amazon where it hurts.

The Genius of a program like Shein is why Apple needs move into web services.

https://restofworld.org/2021/how-shein-beat-amazon-and-reinvented-fast-fashion/

And Eddy Cueless needs to go I didn’t realize he was still there stargazing.

FileMakerFeller 6 Years · 1561 comments

danox said:

Good hopefully the CEO won’t be interested in throwing money at sports or content creation for much longer get into Web Services, Apple stop wasting time on profit less exercises it is time to further disrupt your competition Google, Microsoft, and Amazon where it hurts.

The Genius of a program like Shein is why Apple needs move into web services.

https://restofworld.org/2021/how-shein-beat-amazon-and-reinvented-fast-fashion/

And Eddy Cueless needs to go I didn’t realize he was still there stargazing.

If the important thing is to capture attention then it's a strategic goal and strategic goals do not need to meet the profitability criteria in the short term.

Live sports are apparently the main factor in the desirability (and thus subscription price) of cable packages; if the streaming market works out the same way then Apple absolutely should be investing in this space because it furthers that strategic goal. Tim Cook and Eddy Cue were at the Formula 1 race at Circuit of the Americas last year; F1 is another big drawcard in the live sports pantheon. Apple has already signed MLS and MLB for partial coverage, so I expect them to follow the same path with other major sports.

Shein appears to simply be aggregating manufacturing capacity and streamlining the path to market - Apple's already done that with the App Store. I don't see "web services" as being the same type of market - can you elaborate?