Last night, news dropped that YouTube was set to emerge as the winner of the “NFL Sunday Ticket” sweepstakes.
After a long bidding process, it looks like the online video sharing giants have outlasted the likes of Amazon and Google, but it certainly didn’t come cheap. The latest report from John Ourand of the SportsBusinessJournal claims that YouTube is paying a whopping $2.5-billion per year to host the NFL Sunday Ticket package on their platform.
According to ProFootballTalk, the negotiations between YouTube and the NFL sped up once Apple dropped out of the process. That left just YouTube/Google and Amazon as the last two standing, with Amazon reportedly never coming close to offering the amount of money that YouTube was willing to pay.
As for Apple, their negotiations with the league reportedly fell apart when the NFL refused to allow them to sell the NFL Sunday Ticket package for less than the current price. As PTF states, the NFL can’t reduce the price for the package due to their deals with CBS and Fox, as offering Sunday Ticket for less would result in more subscribers, meaning less people would be watching games on their local Fox and CBS channels.
Previously, it was DirectTV who held the rights to “NFL Sunday Ticket” since 1994. Assuming the deal with YouTube doesn’t fall through, the Sunday Ticket package will be available to customers through YouTube TV and YouTube Premium channels moving forward.
