Apple’s 30% Commission Results in $700 Price Tag for NFL Sunday Ticket
Apple’s high commission for products sold in its digital store helps explain why the cost of Sunday Ticket is so high.
After a long, hot, often boring offseason, NFL fans are now seeing the 2024-25 season racing toward them like a linebacker hungry for a sack. Audiences don’t have much time left to sort out their viewing arrangements for the season, but for fans who live outside the home market of their favorite team, there’s really only one decision to make: whether or not to pay for NFL Sunday Ticket. Customers can sign up for Sunday Ticket with or without a YouTube TV subscription just like last year, but this year they have a new purchase option: through the Apple digital store. The caveat? Fans who subscribe to Sunday Ticket this way will have to pay $679.99 or more for the entire season of the product thanks to the cut that Apple takes from subscriptions sold via its store.
Key Details:
- Shoppers can bundle Sunday Ticket and NFL RedZone in the Apple store for $739.99.
- Sunday Ticket costs $379 per season with a YouTube TV subscription or $479 on YouTube TV Primetime Channels.
- The league won an important legal victory with Sunday Ticket earlier this year after a judge threw out an antitrust ruling against the service.
The eye-popping price for Sunday Ticket in the Apple store comes courtesy of the company’s commissioning policy. Apple takes a 30% cut of anything sold in its store, which means that YouTube had to raise the price to ensure that it does not absorb that extra 30%.
Fans can also purchase a bundle of NFL Sunday Ticket and NFL RedZone via the Apple Store, without a YouTube TV subscription. That will raise the price of an account to $739.99 for the season, the equivalent of $184.99 per month. The price of buying Sunday Ticket through YouTube TV directly is $379 per season, or $419 if viewers bundle with RedZone.
This new option presents a second way for fans to sign up for Sunday Ticket without also combining it with YouTube TV. Viewers can also subscribe to Sunday Ticket via YouTube TV’s Primetime Channels, which costs $479 for the 2024 season after a $30 price increase enacted last week.
John Ourand of Puck News had the story first, and reached out to the NFL for comment.
“The NFL does not control the pricing of Sunday Ticket and does not set or receive any additional fees associated with its sale,” the league replied.
The NFL has repeatedly made this point in recent months, most often in court. The league finally saw the class-action lawsuit against Sunday Ticket that was first filed in 2015 go to trial this year, and the jury in the case ruled that the product constituted an antitrust violation, awarding plaintiffs more than $14 billion in damages. However, the presiding judge threw out the ruling in early August, which will almost certainly lead to an appeal.
A giant price hike for Sunday Ticket in the Apple Store isn’t the only change that YouTube has made to the product this year. On Tuesday, YouTube announced that its multiview feature will finally be fully customizable for Sunday Ticket subscribers this season. The feature is available to viewers who bundle Sunday Ticket with a YouTube TV subscription, or for subscribers who go through YouTube TV Primetime Channels to get the service.
NFL Sunday Ticket
NFL Sunday Ticket is a subscription video streaming service that allows football fans to watch every live out-of-market NFL game on Sunday afternoons on YouTube or YouTube TV.