What the YouTube Sunday NFL Ticket deal means for fans … and the salary cap
Sunday Ticket #SundayTicket
If you’ve wished for Sunday NFL Ticket — which fans can use to watch games that are out of their normal markets on Sundays — to be more accessible than on DirecTV, you’re getting your wish.
The NFL announced a deal with Google and YouTube TV to stream Sunday NFL Ticket. It’ll be an add-on for YouTube TV, and will also be one of the YouTube Primetime Channels.
What does this mean in general? No word on the cost yet, but it’s suddenly going to be a lot easier to get games if you’re, say, a New York Giants fan living in Minneapolis.
There could also be good news for the NFL’s salary cap. From NFL.com earlier this month:
On the revenue side, lucrative new TV deals kick in in 2023. But the NFL has not yet selected a new home for NFL Sunday Ticket, which has belonged to DirecTV since 1994. The current agreement expires after the 2022 season. Under the 2020 collective bargaining agreement, the salary cap and benefits are tied in part to increases of those TV deals, with a “media kicker” increasing players’ share of projected revenue from 48% up to as much as 48.8% — a potential nine-figure swing. So, until the NFL Sunday Ticket deal is done, it’s hard to say definitively where the revenue projection will land and what piece of it will go to players.
CNBC reports that the deal is for “roughly” $2 billion a year.
And this is very much a deal for younger fans when you think about it:
Big news all around here.