YouTube's NFL ‘Sunday Ticket’ pricing: $72.99 per month and $349 per season

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/11/youtube-tv-nfl-sunday-ticket-subscription-pricing.html

by ilamont • 3 years ago

23 17 3 years ago

favorited5• 3 years ago

I've been an NFL Sunday Ticket subscriber for a few years, ever since I learned that you could subscribe without DirecTV service if you live in an apartment, but I'm thinking of cancelling this year.

The price was already outrageous given the number of games which are blacked out. There were plenty of times when I couldn't watch the games I wanted to at all, because they were blacked out for me on NFLST even though they weren't airing on a local station.

I'm sure the tech will be better under Google, but their video player was absolutely dreadful. Any time the HLS streaming bitrate changed (which it did every time you selected a different game), the audio stream would change and emit this screeching sound. And lord help you if you decided to switch from watching it on one device to another, because it was entirely likely that the service would decide that you were trying to share passwords and lock both devices out for like 15 minutes.

I don't personally pirate NFL streams, but I know people who do and the quality of their viewing experience is far above people who pay for NFLST. Sunday Ticket is the prime example of how having a total monopoly leads to a barely functioning and exorbitantly priced product.

rticesterp• 3 years ago

I had the same problem. The games are blacked out if they are televised on any other platform. The team I follow (Cowboys) is an out of area team but they were blocked all but for 3 games. Those three games weren't even good games.

It wasn't worth it. I'd like to see a model where the games are pay per view. Let me pay by the game when I want to watch.

favorited5• 3 years ago

I'd even buy a season of a single team's games as a block, if there were never black-outs. I grew up in Boston, so I usually want to watch the Patriots, but NFLST would sometimes black-out their games even though they were almost never available over boadcast in my market. No idea why, but I still had to pay for those weeks!

red-iron-pine• 3 years ago

My experience as well. Or rather, my father's experience, which I was able to partake in.

Long term I'm thinking Davey Jones, but we'll see if YT can justify the price with good playback and service

mud_dauber• 3 years ago

What is the experience like wrt to commercial interruptions? I can’t watch NFL on broadcast tv any more - the dead air to game action ratio is dreadful. $72/month just makes this an absolute nonstarter.

lotsofpulp• 3 years ago

Blacked out games also make it a nonstarter.

favorited5• 3 years ago

You get the local station advertisement (as if you were watching the game in-market), but you can switch to any other live game during commercials. It also includes the DirecTV Red Zone channel[0], which basically does that for you and tries to just show whichever games are currently at exciting moments. That's honestly one of the best ways to watch, because they just switch away from any games that have an ad break. Presumably it will be changing or going away entirely, since DirecTV no longer has the rights to these broadcasts.

There's also a "Fantasy Zone" channel for fantasy football stuff, but I've never actually watched that one.

[0] Not to be confused with the "NFL RedZone" channel, a completely different television broadcast that does the exact same thing, but hosted by a different dude.

paxys• 3 years ago

$73/month for YouTube TV

$350/season for the added subscription

Ads

No local games

No primetime games

Hard pass for me.

favorited5• 3 years ago

You don't get local games with NFL Sunday Ticket, but if you have YouTube TV you'll get your local CBS, NBC, and Fox affiliates which should carry the local games.

ls612• 3 years ago

Local and prime time games should be free OTA anyway.

mholyland• 3 years ago

NFL Plus offers local and primetime streams for $5/season[0].

0. https://id.nfl.com/subscriptions/select/nflplus

exabrial2• 3 years ago

NFL just can't seem to figure it out. They're too deep into cable's pants to get out. Litreally eveyone wants an option to:

1. Stream one single game for a fixed fee. You can make this price pretty high, like $100.

2. Buy the entire season online to a single named device. I'd probably pay $500 for all games for the entire season. But there could be absolutely zero blackouts for any reason.

And I don't mind commercials actually... American Football has pretty funny ones usually.

But anything less than these two options I'm out.

favorited5• 3 years ago

And I don't mind commercials actually... American Football has pretty funny ones usually.

No commercial is funny the 50th time you see it, and NFL games air the same dozen State Farm, Geico, Taco Bell, & Corona Lite commercials all season. Half of them staring either Patrick Mahomes or Aaron Rodgers.

exabrial2• 3 years ago

Whats wrong with Pat ? :)

BoiledCabbage• 3 years ago

Litreally eveyone wants an option to:
1. Stream one single game for a fixed fee. You can make this price pretty high, like $100.

I'm really not certain what you're talking about. Are you asserting that the vast majority of people want to pay $100 to watch a single game of football??

That is so far from any mainstream view I don't even know where to begin.

What is even the use case for this? I can't be someone who follows their home team because those games are pretty much broadcast for free on their local over the air tv.

It can't be for someone who moved away and wants to catch up with their team because it would be $1700 just to watch the full regular season for their favorite team. So they'd buy the full season pass.

Is it someone who is out of town for a single weekend and rather than find a sports bar would pay $100 to watch that one game? While possible that seems hard to believe there enough of a market for that.

Who do you envision paying the $100 to see a single game live? Or am I completely misunderstanding you?

biaachmonkie• 3 years ago

Well if you can live with watching the games on delay and can wait a few hours NFL GamePass gets you all the games for ~$100 per season. I hate commercials and they strip them out of the full broadcast after a few hours, the initial upload includes them. And if you want to run through games quickly, they also have a condensed version of the games, the strips out all the dead time, so games are only ~40 minutes.

wanderingmoose• 3 years ago

I follow racing more than NFL, and I think Formula1 and Motogp have streaming figured out

Formula1: $80 usd for the entire season. No stopping the race for ads, but they digitally insert ads in dead space on the screen. Access to the entire weekend -- pre/post shows, formula3, formula2, etc Watch races live. Camera choice during the live race -- the tv feed, helicopter shot, or onboard of any driver. All seasons of all past years (of current owners...but goes back ?30 years) of races.

MotoGP: $150 usd for the entire season No cutaway from the race for ads. Access to the entire weekend -- pre/post shows, moto3, moto2 Watch races live Camera layout choice during raced -- one large screen, two screens, on large screen with 2 or 3 small screens underneath Choice of camera per screen in your layout -- tv feed, heli, onboards, timing sheets, track map w/ rider's positions overlaid on the track map All seasons of past years to current rights availability (all races back to ?1999, some select races back to 1992)

BUT -- these are the prices for the USA market, which is pretty small. I wonder what the european cost or availability of the content is.

Formula1 streaming is very recent as of the last ownership change. Motogp was streaming live races (with no ads) by 2005.

The NFL is a weird situation. As people shifted away towards streaming, live sports remained as a place for premium ads, even though the market age of NFL fans is increasing (* as of some previous job related general entertainment market information...can't cite)

NFL was just a part of growing up in the midwest. I've always enjoyed seeing games in-person. I really hope they can have a formula1 moment where they throw out the old regime and quickly adapt to modern viewing habits and interest. It feels like a Kodak moment.

YouTube's NFL ‘Sunday Ticket’ pricing: $72.99 per month and $349 per season

Related Stories