Google’s YouTube bought itself an expensive present only three days before Christmas last year, paying $14 billion to steal NFL Sunday Ticket away from DirecTV and immediately becoming a major player within the sports universe.
The seven-year deal could help YouTube TV sign up more virtual MVPD subscribers, as well as strengthen YouTube Primetime Channels aggregation service. And with the launch of the 2023 NFL season this month, YouTube is only just getting started.
But it’s somewhat unclear whether the NFL Sunday Ticket audience has been growing or shrinking in recent years, owing to DirecTV’s lack of reporting any metrics around it. Either way, YouTube faces several challenges as it looks to recover the $2 billion annual cost, both in terms of direct revenue and ancillary benefits that may flow to its other YouTube-branded businesses and significant advertising ecosystem. It’s usually stupid to bet against Google. The Alphabet-owned juggernaut tends to come out on top most of the time. However, the first couple weeks of football season suggest that it’s not taking any chances on the awareness front; Google has struck numerous partnerships across the media landscape to ensure that anyone - and we mean anyone, anywhere - who might subscribe to NFL Sunday Ticket has every incentive to do so.
In our new free report, “The Golden (Sunday) Ticket,” One Touch Intelligence examines major promotions around NFL Sunday Ticket that all add up to an unprecedented amount of advertising and marketing for the decades-old superfan game hub.
Google has gone all out, even signing a partnership with DirecTV, which has been offering new customers a $400 NFL Sunday Ticket reward card to in essence help YouTube migrate existing subs over to its YouTube version as seamlessly as possible. That may be the weirdest, most ironic, promo out there, but it’s just one of many. YouTube has also partnered with Comcast’s Xfinity ($200 off with eligible TV and Internet plans), Verizon (free with eligible phone or home Internet plans), Frontier ($50 off with broadband and YouTube TV package), FanDuel ($100 off and $200 in bonus bets), smart TV maker TCL ($200 off with select TCL manufactured Google TVs), Bud Light (2,000 winners get free subscriptions), and social influencer MrBeast (1,000 free subscriptions via a QR Code). For its part, YouTube itself was offering $50 off for users, along with four free months of the Max streaming service for those who signed up by September 19. We outline details of all these promos in the report.
The big question is whether this promotional cavalcade will pay big dividends, although it’s unlikely that the stepped-up promo won’t result in at least a short-term spike in signups. How sustainable that will be over time is a larger question, and one that may not become fully visible any time soon, considering that YouTube may never disclose specific NFL Sunday Ticket numbers. Even its flagship vMVPD YouTube TV has only disclosed its numbers once, announcing in July 2022 that it had reached 5 million subs. According to One Touch Intelligence’s StreamTRAK video intelligence service estimates, YouTube TV had approximately 6 million subs as of the close of Q2, although it’s unclear how much NFL Sunday Ticket might accelerate YouTube TV’s growth, and we suspect that Google won’t disclose anything about that or NFL Sunday Ticket’s year-one performance during its Q3 earnings. That is, unless the numbers are stellar and worth bragging about.
Whatever the case, YouTube has certainly breathed new life into the NFL Sunday Ticket product, perhaps helping to bring in younger and more diverse demos who are more responsive to discount offers and wider marketing across myriad media and social channels. Meanwhile, sports fans face an increasingly confusing landscape in which live sports has now fractured across broadcast, cable, streaming, and aggregation platforms, all living side by side with a “watch everything out-of-market” service like NFL Sunday Ticket.
On one hand, it’s the best time to be a sports fan, with more ways to watch than ever. On the other hand, it’s the most confusing time to be alive as well. Google has seven years to figure out a way to capitalize on sports fandom while feeding its many ancillary businesses. These are early days, but as NFL Sunday Ticket partner FanDuel might tell you, banking on Google’s failure is always a risky bet.
Michael Grebb is Vice President and Lead Analyst for One Touch Intelligence, which provides market intelligence and industry analysis services for leading companies in the media and telecommunications space. The One Touch Intelligence STREAMTRAK series is a complimentary service offering industry professionals insights and context around developments in the digital media sphere. “The Golden (Sunday) Ticket” is available for free download here.
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