DirecTV Has Sunday Ticket Troubles Second Week in a Row

DirecTV might want to think about punting soon. 

For the second week in a row, the satellite television provider fumbled NFL Sunday Ticket — leaving fans unable to watch out-of-market NFL games.

• NFL Sunday Ticket was unavailable for close to 90 minutes on Sunday. Restaurants and bars didn’t seem to be affected. The company’s non-sports satellite broadcasts were also unaffected.
• DirecTV apologized last week after experiencing similar difficulties. The provider gave affected customers prorated refunds for the first week of issues.
• Sunday Ticket costs $293.94 for the season. Sunday Ticket Max, which includes NFL RedZone, costs $395.94.

“We will begin to reach out to our customers who were unable to stream some of the games on Sunday to let them know we will automatically reimburse them for week two,” a DirecTV spokesperson told Front Office Sports.

YouTubeTV, SlingTV, and NFL+, the league’s new streaming service, also experienced outages during NFL broadcasts in the season’s first week.

Change of Possession

DirecTV’s contract for NFL Sunday Ticket ends after this year, and tech giants are competing for the package.

Apple, Google, Amazon, and Disney have all shown interest. Previous reports indicated that the NFL was eager to bring in Apple to form a relationship with the U.S.’s leading provider of mobile phones.

The league is looking for $2.5 billion annually for the package, up from the $1.5 billion DirecTV currently pays. DirecTV typically loses money on the offering.

The NFL did not apply any pressure on DirecTV to end the deal early, sources familiar with the matter told FOS.