Agreed and that was the first thought that crossed my mind too. You would think the NFL would want to open it up to as many people as possible. Also if Google believes having it will drive millions of people to its Youtube TV service I think they will be in for a rude awakening.
Bye Bye NFL Sunday Ticket on Directv.
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I would think that the NFL is interested in getting the most money then can. Eyeballs could easily be a secondary issue (especially if they are willing to entertain bids from DIRECTV, Apple and ESPN).
It worked for DIRECTV as long as DIRECTV had enough customers to support it. YTTV is arguably much easier to get and a whole lot cheaper dance card than DIRECTV (coupled with the ability to turn it on and off more or less at will).
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The NFL doesn't care about opening it up, they care about making as much money from it as possible. They know the overwhelming majority of people watch the games that are on broadcast TV, NFLST is just an extra and if they had a choice between getting paid $1 billion for someone who had 5 million subscribers and getting paid $3 billion for someone who had 1 million subscribers they'd choose the latter. The 100 million people watching the broadcast games on Sunday are what matters to them audience-wise.
Jumping to conclusions now, aren't we? First, they haven't even signed a deal, and secondly, if they do secure the rights I'm quite sure Google can figure out a way to sell ST without forcing anyone into YTTV.
Well somewhere someone has to be able to do some math. If any service pays $3 billion per year and has only 1 million subscribers and miraculously manages to sell it to ALL 1 million of their subscribers at $300 a piece has just lost $2.7 billion dollars. Sure the NFL doesn't care. But some share holders at some company are going to care. Somewhere common sense has to come into play. I agree with Grafixguy that Google would be willing to sell subscriptions to anyone. They might give Youtube TV and Youtube Premium subscribers a bit of a discount but that is it. No way they would limit it to Youtube TV subscribers only.
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Assumptions are important in Mathematics and yours regarding per-account revenue of $300 is an utterly failed assumption. You've completely ignored the commercial customers that can represent thousands (or even millions) in revenue per month each. Whether the commercial accounts are handled directly or through a commercial distribution service, there's going to be considerable revenue coming from those customers.
It is perhaps also folly to assume that an active YTTV account will be required for all service levels (or any, for that matter) even if it makes perfect sense as a promotional tool for the winner's established streaming service.
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If the requirement for ST is that you need to subscribe to YTTV, how do you figure that they won't get more subs? Assuming that most ST subs are NOT YTTV users, the will get SOME new subs, just by having ST subs sign up. Now. how many they get is a completely DIFFERENT question.
Yes commercial can make up some of the money. Not all of it at the price the NFL wants though. This whole process of trying to find a new provider appears to show just how full the NFL is of itself. They thought providers would be stampeding over each other to get this service at any price and it turns out they aren't.
No doubt they would get more subscribers. But enough to basically pay for the service. No way.
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That is their problem. People here seem to be spending way too much time worrying about billion dollar deals being bad for multibillion dollar companies. If the company feels that the product is worth the investment they will spend the money. With or without the blessing of anyone here.
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Nobody figures that. Given that Google could easily offer NFLST without an active YTTV subscription is the only reason we're talking about it.
It is up to Google to figure out for themselves whether the revenue from non-YTTV subscribers will be offset by the YTTV revenue from those who accept being forced to subscribe to YTTV. Do they get more than twice as many NFLST customers without requiring a YTTV subscription as they do with? I expect that they might. Sometimes the goal is just getting into a new wallet (along with its associated name, address and phone number) that you wouldn't otherwise be able to access. Information is money.
Unlike with DIRECTV, adding NFLST to the basic YTTV represents perhaps a doubling of the monthly cost and if the NFLST subscribers are as transient as the NFLST season, that's not entirely helpful without long-term programming commitments.
And so far they haven't.
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To assert that the reason that a deal hasn't been made comes down entirely to the amount of the bid isn't reasonable. We are told that the issues are more about what the bidders wants to buy versus what the NFL is offering.
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I don't even think millions is out of the question. How many people sub to ST today? The question is how many stick with it after the season is over? It's a little different than something like ATV+ in that some subset of those people may leave DirecTV and use YTTV as their primary OTT service. But nobody knows anything really. We'll see.
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Absent commitments, I expect that a relatively large number will leave because there are so many options and so little good (and fresh) linear TV.
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I still think the majority of TV watchers view linear TV or have at least have linear TV available. Sure it's not as much as it used to be. If that wasn't the case, why would YTTV, Sling, Hulu, and DirecTV stream even exist? Why would they bother. "Good" is a matter of opinion of course. There's always sports, local news, and other things people watch on linear TV, even though in many cases they are available elsewhere. Linear TV is not quite dead yet, but it's now a "senior citizen" in that it's not quite dying, but getting up there!
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So far no one has made a deal to carry Sunday Ticket next year. But several companies are interested. Details to be announced. Speculation until then.
No deal is dead yet.
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If they wanted to avoid people only subscribing to YTTV for a few months they could say only people on a yearly subscription are eligible to get NFLST. That's what I figure Apple would do if they got the rights, but making people subscribe to Apple TV+ at $50 a year is different than making them subscribe to YTTV at $800 a year or whatever it is now.
But I guess that's still cheaper than subscribing to Directv, though Directv lets you suspend your service so you only need to subscribe for six months a year to get NFLST.
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As of now, 68 Million Households still get paid Live TV and that includes YTTV and the likes, that is out of 129 million Households, in 8 years, Live Paid TV has lost over 30 million, the pace of those leaving is increasing.
Number of pay TV households in the U.S. 2026 | Statista
Forecast data from February 2022 indicates that the number of pay TV households in the United States will stand at around 68.5 million by the end of the year.
www.statista.com
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Six months of DirecTV is about the same price of a year of YTTV.
Average monthly DirecTV Bill is reported as over $130, so $780 for 6 months
YTTV, $65 x 12= $780
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