DirecTV Could Retain ‘Sunday Ticket’ Commercial Business

The NFL scored another big payday Thursday by agreeing to an estimated $14 billion, 7-year deal with Google’s YouTube TV for residential rights to its “Sunday Ticket” package.

DirecTV has held the rights to “Sunday Ticket” since its inception in 1994. But the satellite giant’s 28-year-old relationship with the NFL is not dead yet.

DirecTV is in talks to retain the “commercial” portion of “Sunday Ticket,” sources said. That includes the 300,000-plus sports bars and restaurants that use the service to show out-of-market NFL games to customers.

Under this scenario, DirecTV would either deal directly with the NFL or do a sub-licensing deal with Google or another company. The NFL is looking to pocket as much as $200 million from licensing commercial rights, according to the Wall Street Journal.

“The NFL retains the commercial rights to ‘Sunday Ticket’ and are in the midst of a very competitive process for that,” a league spokesman told Front Office Sports Thursday.

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| by Michael McCarthy

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DirecTV declined to comment. 

But it makes sense for the company to try to remain in the “Sunday Ticket” business.

For now, most sports bars and restaurants show live events through satellite dishes on their roofs rather than via high-speed streaming.

The specter of key sports games freezing or buffering at crucial moments gives sports bar owners nightmares. Many prefer to keep their old dish rather than embrace the brave new world of live-streaming sports.

Apple had long been considered the front-runner for ‘Sunday Ticket.’ But the tech giant recently dropped out of the bidding, which included Amazon and Disney.

YouTube TV will take over “Sunday Ticket” rights starting in 2023. DirecTV has been paying the NFL $1.5 billion yearly for the rights under a contract extension signed in 2014.