On Sunday, YouTube experienced its first major hiccup as the rights holder for NFL Sunday Ticket when game streams in the early window experienced significant buffering issues.
Now, that problem has been “completely mitigated,” said YouTube global head of media and sports partnerships Lori Conkling during the Sports Business Journal Media Innovators conference.
At the conference, Conkling also preached patience when addressing a recent Morgan Stanley report that the Google-owned streamer is losing $1.2 million per year on the NFL games package and that it does not expect Sunday Ticket to be profitable for YouTube.
“We’re very bullish on this deal,” Conkling said. “We wouldn’t have done it otherwise.” She added that the nature of YouTube’s technology should lead to improvements and innovation over time.
Google is paying $14 billion for seven years of rights to the NFL’s coveted out-of-market game package, which was previously owned exclusively by DirecTV.
Earlier this week, YouTube announced that it would be cutting the price of Sunday Ticket to coincide with the midway point in the season, with the cost of the base package coming down to $174 from $349; prorated discounts are decently standard practice for this type of sports package.
