During this year’s Super Bowl, YouTube brought out all the bells and whistles it was holding to tempt football fans when the platform takes over the 30th year of NFL Sunday Ticket this fall. The other shoe has now dropped and, fortunately, fans aren’t being taken to the cleaners on price.
When Sunday Ticket was under DirecTV’s rule, the cheapest package was $293.94, but a subscription to DirecTV was also required. Now with YouTube in charge, the new full-season price rings up at $349 or $389 with RedZone.
However, if a fan purchases by June 6, they’ll get $100 off both packages. If someone is already a YouTubeTV subscriber, they’ll have the additional option of purchasing only the RedZone Channel for $10.99 per month during the season.
Never done a Sunday Ticket before?
With all the teases that YouTube has shown so far, Sunday Ticket looks like it could be a huge step up from what fans have had to cobble together by flipping back and forth between channels and hanging out at bars to watch.
Sunday Ticket includes all out-of-market regular-season games that air each Sunday on both Fox and CBS but with one slight caveat: any local game (in an NFL team location) that’s blacked out on Sunday Ticket can only be watched on the local CBS or Fox station.
If you only want to watch your local team when they’re playing away, you’re out of luck, though. So far, YouTube’s stance is that it’s either all or none. A fan’s best option at that point is to look for a bar that’s playing the game they want to watch.
Luckily for the NFL, the league recently announced a deal with RedBird Capital Partners for the formation of EverPass Media, a new media platform that will hold the exclusive rights to distribute NFL Sunday Ticket to bars, restaurants, hotels and other commercial venues in the U.S. beginning this NFL season. If a bar or restaurant licenses the package, it will have access to NFL Sunday Ticket on a non-exclusive basis.