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NFL Sunday Ticket

With Shorter Than Expected Lag Time, NFL Sunday Ticket Passes First Test on YouTube TV

David Satin
David covers the biggest news stories, live events, premieres, and informational pieces for The Streamable. Before joining TS, he wrote extensively for Screen Rant and has years of experience writing about the entertainment and streaming industries. He's a Broncos fan, streams on his Toshiba Fire TV, and his favorites include "Andor," "Rings of Power," and "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds."
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David Satin

The reviews are in, and it’s passing grades all around for YouTube TV’s first weekend as host of NFL Sunday Ticket. The out-of-market games service was well-received by streaming users, and many took to social media to voice their approval for the service.

Lag time between the action occurring on the field and when users would see it on their screens has always been a bit of an issue for NFL Sunday Ticket users, but not this week. Most customers reported this lag time — also known as latency — was far shorter than anticipated, and there were few examples of users being asked to verify their location or other technical problems.

On average, The Streamable found that live TV streaming services carrying Super Bowl LVII were behind the over-the-air broadcast of the game by around 50 seconds. By contrast, Sunday Ticket users reported they were only 10-20 seconds behind the action this week. That’s a marked improvement by YouTube TV, which is paying around $2 billion per season for the rights to the service.

One divisive issue for YouTube TV is its multiview feature, which allows customers to watch up to four games at once. Some fans loved the feature, while others questioned why they could not customize it to include whichever games they wanted. YouTube TV provides an expansive list of multiview combinations, but users cannot swap out games until they find their ideal mix. If YouTube TV can enable customers to pick which games they see in their multiview as the season goes along, it will lead to even more glowing feedback.

Still, with mostly positive reviews from users thus far, YouTube TV must now focus on building scale. One Wall Street analyst posited earlier this year that YouTube TV will have to attract more than double the amount of customers that NFL Sunday Ticket ever had on DIRECTV just to break even on its deal with the league. A good user experience will help, but YouTube will have to keep improving its Sunday Ticket product if it hopes to garner enough viewers to make a profit on the deal.

A subscription to NFL Sunday Ticket costs $449 for the season if you choose not to subscribe to YouTube TV. If you do, the price drops to $349, but now until Sept. 19 customers who sign up for the service can get $50 off no matter which plan they sign up for.

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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.

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If you use YouTube TV as your live TV provider, you’ll save $100 off the package price.

Users can choose to add NFL RedZone, which bounces from game to game. But Sunday Ticket is superior for fans who want to see every play of their favorite teams, even if they don’t live where the games are locally televised.

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$349+ / year
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David Satin
David covers the biggest news stories, live events, premieres, and informational pieces for The Streamable. Before joining TS, he wrote extensively for Screen Rant and has years of experience writing about the entertainment and streaming industries. He's a Broncos fan, streams on his Toshiba Fire TV, and his favorites include "Andor," "Rings of Power," and "Star Trek: Strange New Worlds."
Read full bio ›
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