YouTube lands NFL 'Sunday Ticket' package in massive deal

NFL "Sunday Ticket" is officially on the move to YouTubeTV after the NFL announced a deal on Thursday morning. As part of the agreement, YouTube will pay the NFL $2 billion per year for the "Sunday Ticket" package. 

The deal will begin with the 2023 season and end the league's long-time partnership with DirecTV.

Games will be available to fans as an extension of YouTubeTV subscriptions, or as a standalone a-la-carte package on YouTube Primetime Channels.

"Sunday Ticket" has been available since 1994 through DirecTV, but that deal was set to expire at the conclusion of the 2022 season. DirecTV has had multiple hiccups this season and had to refund fans for service outages in the early weeks of the season.

AppleTV had long been considered the front-runner to land the new "Sunday Ticket" deal, but they bowed out of the talks earlier this week, clearing the way for YouTube to land it.

According to the NFL's release, this new deal will "include increased content on the NFL channel, the creation of an NFL International show available on the YouTube platform, and the creation of a creator content program for select top YouTube creators globally." 

The NFL has increasingly dipped its toes into the streaming side of sports, with the new Thursday night package showing games exclusively on Amazon Prime. 

Going from a satellite service to a streaming service should also make "Sunday Ticket" readily available to a wider audience for the NFL.