Is YouTube TV Rolling Out NFL Sunday Ticket Discounts Because Football Package Is Failing to Drive Subscriptions?
NFL Sunday Ticket is undergoing a bold, new experiment this season. After decades of residing exclusively with the satellite provider DIRECTV, the NFL’s out-of-market package is gearing up for its first season on streaming. Not only does the move mean that YouTube TV is the Sunday afternoon package’s new home, but the Google-owned platform is also letting football fans subscribe without having to pay for a live TV streaming subscription.
The move to YouTube TV was not accompanied by the advent of single-team plans, as many users had hoped, but the summer started with a fantastic introductory offer; for nearly two months, new users could sign up and save $100 off of any NFL Sunday Ticket subscription. That was a big discount, but considering that users who wanted both Sunday Ticket and NFL RedZone without having to sign up for YouTube TV would have to pay nearly $500 for the season, it was an appropriate promotional price.
While that deal expired in early June, the discounts and deals have hardly stopped since then. Just this week, YouTube TV announced a new partnership with FanDuel which allows users who make a $5 bet to get that same $100 discount to Sunday Ticket. YouTube TV has also partnered with Max to offer subscribers a four-month trial of that service for free and is giving discounts of up to $200 off the season to customers who buy select models of TCL TVs.
These promotions may be having the intended effect, as YouTube TV was the only live TV streaming service estimated to have added subscribers in the second quarter of 2023 (YouTube TV does not make its actual subscriber numbers public). But the sheer number of repeated deals being offered by the service leaves room to question whether it’s getting the number of customers it needs to make its Sunday Ticket acquisition worthwhile.
MoffettNathanson analyst Michael Nathanson estimated when the YouTube TV/Sunday Ticket deal was closed that the platform would have to attract 4.5 million users just to break even on the $2 billion-per-season contract signed with the NFL. Sunday Ticket never had more than 2 million users per year on DIRECTV, and it no longer requires customers to sign up for a two-year contract. Other football products have seen the transition to streaming from linear TV go less-than-perfectly recently. In 2022, “Thursday Night Football” broadcasts moved from broadcast and cable outlets exclusively to Amazon’s Prime Video streaming service. Despite initial success, the Thursday games saw a 41% decline in viewers over the previous season, when games were available on linear TV channels like Fox or NFL Network.
Those figures would certainly lend credence to the idea that YouTube TV is desperately trying to attract more users to Sunday Ticket, but there is another explanation. As the only live TV service (cable, satellite, or streaming) currently adding users, YouTube TV might see this moment as an opportunity to stamp out its competition in the live TV arena. Any live TV service that offers ABC, CBS, FOX, and NBC carries at least some NFL games, but no one can compete with YouTube TV for out-of-market NFL streaming. It’s certainly possible that YouTube TV is just trying to double down on its own success and striking while the iron is hot with its repeated Sunday Ticket discounts.
It’s likely that YouTube TV’s subscriber count for its first season of NFL Sunday Ticket will leak at some point in the next few months. Until then, however, conjecture will continue regarding just how many users the platform has been able to bring to Sunday Ticket, especially if it keeps offering special deals and promotions for 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.