YouTube revealed the highly anticipated details of its new streaming plan for NFL Sunday Ticket on Tuesday, providing a win for fans who were shut out of the programming when it was aired by DirectTV by making the service available to anyone with web access.
But it’s a win that comes at a hefty cost: The price for the out-of-market football game service is rising, the Google-owned YouTube said in a blog post. Fast-acting fans can get a $100 discount if they sign up for the service before June 6.
For the presale that began Tuesday, access to the 2023 season costs $249 for YouTube TV members with a base plan and $349 for non-members.
YouTube TV is an online bundle of more than 100 live channels.
YouTube is also offering a bundle option with NFL Sunday Ticket and NFL RedZone for $289 for the season during the presale. For non-members, the cost goes up by $100.
All of the options will cost an additional $100 for those who don’t book it by June 6.
DirecTV charged about $300 per season for the basic NFL Sunday Ticket package and $400 for its version of RedZone, meaning the new plans are about $50 to $90 pricier on YouTube.
Notably, however, the option was only available to DirecTV satellite subscribers in the past.
“For the first time, NFL Sunday Ticket is broadly available without a satellite subscription through YouTube Primetime Channels,” the company said Tuesday.
Sunday Ticket includes all out-of-market Sunday regular-season NFL games that are broadcast on Fox and CBS. Fans who subscribe to the service can watch every team, and every single NFL game, live.
YouTube it is also adding new functions to Sunday Ticket, including “multiview,” a service launched during the March Madness tournament that allows viewers to view up to four streams at once.
The streamer reportedly paid upwards of $2 billion to win the rights to air the NFL package.
DirecTV had carried the games since Sunday Ticket’s inception in 1994. But the satellite service, which has just 13.3 million subscribers, was able to reach far fewer fans than YouTube can potentially sign up.
YouTube has long aired football — the NFL YouTube channel had more than 10 million subscribers even before it inked the Sunday Ticket deal. Each of the NFL’s 32 teams also already have individual channels. The NFL Network, NFL Films and Mundo NFL, its Spanish channel, also have official channels on the service, and NFL RedZone has been available to YouTube subscribers since 2020.
