Report: NFL Considering Ending DirectTV's Exclusive Ownership of Sunday Ticket
The NFL is looking to expand its Sunday Ticket package for out-of-town games beyond its exclusive deal with DirecTV, Commissioner Roger Goodell told Bloomberg in an interview on Friday.
The league renewed its deal with DirecTV for Sunday Ticket in 2014 through 2022, but the contact contains an option that would let the NFL out of the agreement in time for the 2020 season.
Goodell said that the league is considering splitting up the rights to make games more widely available to fans who don't watch games exclusively on television. The NFL wants the Sunday Ticket package to be available on multiple platforms.
Sunday Ticket is one of eight viewing packages the league currently offers.
“We’re having great discussions with DirecTV and AT&T,” Goodell said. “We’ve had a 25-year partnership and we want to continue that partnership, but we also are looking to see how we can change the delivery.”
He continued: “We’re looking to make sure that we continue to deliver this package, which is a premium package of great content. We want it delivered on several different platforms.”
The league already has a streaming deal for mobile devices and computers with Verizon but the deal is nonexclusive. It also has a Thursday night streaming deal with Amazon.com and has tested online streaming of games with DirecTV in the past.
The provider and the NFL used seven cities as testing sites last season for live streaming. They could potentially split their current rights to allow them to sell a streaming version of Sunday Ticket.
