Apple has been rumored to be trying to secure more sports content for quite some time. And it’s not always the National Football League. But this time around it is, with a new report aiming to shed some light on the heated battle going on to secure one of the most sought-after streaming deals out there.
According to a report from Sports Business Journal (via 9to5Mac), Apple is currently one of the two “front-runners” to land the NFL Sunday Ticket streaming rights. As you surmised from the title, Amazon is apparently the other big company vying to land the same deal. If the deal does go through, it means that Apple could start streaming NFL Sunday Ticket games, via Apple TV+ probably, when the 2023 season ends. But, of course, negotiations are currently ongoing and anything could change between now and when they are finalized.
Which means while Apple is a front-runner, it may end up going another way.
NFL Sunday Ticket is a way to stream out-of-market games. It carries weekday games on the regular, but the package is only available via DirecTV at the moment. With that licensing deal about to expire, though, the NFL has been looking for alternatives for quite some time. Interestingly, NFL Sunday Ticket is not cheap, with packages priced upwards of $400 depending on what the viewer wants to see. If Apple does land the deal, it would be curious to see how the streaming games are incorporated into the Apple TV+ package — which retails for $4.99 per month at the moment.
The report says that Disney is looking to land the streaming rights to NFL Sunday Ticket as well, but apparently that company has been low-balling bids, especially as it compares to Apple and Amazon offers.
DirecTV is not expected to renew the streaming rights, which are set to expire at the end of the 2023 season.
It appears likely that Sunday Ticket will move exclusively to a streaming service in 2023, as several sources have describedAppleandAmazonas the front-runners to get theNFL’s out-of-market package.
Disney has not ended its negotiations for the package, which it would run on ESPN+, though the amount that Disney has told the NFL it will pay is said to be well below the amount Apple and Amazon have discussed.
Apple has reportedly been working on some kind of streaming deal for NFL games for quite some time. It was reported not too long ago that the NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and Apple CEO Tim Cook talk on a regular basis. And it was in July of last year that we heard a report that Apple was looking to lock down streaming rights to NFL Sunday Ticket.
We’ll just have to wait and see how it all shakes out. What do you think Apple would do, pricing wise, if it does secure the streaming rights for a deal that’s worth upwards of $2 billion for the companies involved?