ESPN Wanted to Price NFL Sunday Ticket at $70 and Offer Single-Team Plans, NFL Declined
Reports also indicate Apple told the league it could attract 15 to 20 million customers to Sunday Ticket, which the league saw unfavorably.
The NFL could be in deep trouble with the class-action lawsuit against NFL Sunday Ticket currently being presented to a Los Angeles jury. Many legal experts think that the league is likely to lose the suit, though it could ultimately win on technical grounds during the appeals process. As witnesses like New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and NFL chief media officer Brian Rolapp take the stand, more and more details about Sunday Ticket — and the steps that the NFL has taken to limit its evolution — have become available, and the particulars are unlikely to leave fans happy with the league.
Key Details:
- ESPN proposed selling single-team plans of Sunday Ticket and pricing the service as low as $70 per season, but the idea was nixed by Rolapp.
- Apple said it could attract as many as 20 million customers to Sunday Ticket, which the league also looked askance at.
- The NFL wants to keep too many viewers from signing up for Sunday Ticket so they would continue to watch games on CBS and Fox.
The new details in the Sunday Ticket trial come courtesy of Edvard Pettersson of Courthouse News Service, as reported by Sports Business Journal. The detail most likely to upset fans who want to watch more out-of-market NFL games is that ESPN proposed selling single-team Sunday Ticket packages, and wanted to price the service at $70 per season to attract more customers. An email from Rolapp to the Disney-owned worldwide leader in sports that was presented in court demonstrated that the proposal was not in line with what the league had in mind.
Rolapp has discussed the possibility of offering smaller Sunday Ticket packages before but hasn’t gone as far as allowing for the idea of single-team plans. After one season on YouTube TV, no new subscription options for NFL Sunday Ticket have been announced, and the league is running out of time if it wants to introduce such additional options for the 2024 season.
Reporting from the trial also indicates that Apple told the league it could attract as many as 15 to 20 million viewers to Sunday Ticket if it held the rights. Apple looked like the leader to acquire Sunday Ticket for most of 2022, and was deep in negotiations with the league before backing out of talks in December of that year. The tech firm asked the judge in the case to deny a subpoena compelling it to turn over information in October of last year, but as the case has now gone to trial it has no choice but to share information with the plaintiffs.
Why Would the NFL Want to Limit the Sunday Ticket Audience?
The latest details from the NFL Sunday Ticket lawsuit show that whether or not the NFL believes it has the best distribution model in sports or not, it is fiercely dedicated to that model. The availability of games on over-the-air broadcast channels in the markets of the teams playing is what allows the NFL to pile up huge ratings every week, as well as the advertising revenues that go along with big audiences.
That’s the biggest reason that the NFL doesn’t want Sunday Ticket to draw tens of millions of subscribers. If the package is that easy for viewers to access, they may decide they don’t need to watch games on CBS or Fox on Sunday afternoons anymore. Sunday Ticket has always been positioned as a premium service, in order to not upset broadcast partners.
“We’re not looking to get lots of people,” Patriots owner and NFL media committee chairman Robert Kraft said in his testimony. “We want to keep it as a premium offering.”
Fox was so terrified of the increased availability of NFL Sunday Ticket that it asked the NFL to put a 20% cap on new subscribers and to agree to a minimum price of $293.96 for the product going forward. The NFL declined, but it did put a provision in the broadcasting contract signed by Fox and other partners in 2021 that stipulated that Sunday Ticket would not be included in the base plan of any cable package or streaming service, and would remain a “buy through” product.
The lawsuit could have lasting consequences for the league if it loses. The suit has been brought by over 2 million residential customers and nearly 50,000 commercial establishments who say that Sunday Ticket has violated antitrust laws. The $7 billion in damages the plaintiffs are seeking would be tripled to $21 billion because of the suit’s status as an antitrust case, and a judgment in their favor could force the NFL to let teams sell their own out-of-market rights going forward.
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.