NFL Sunday Ticket will have many new features when it moves to YouTube this fall, says Google Exec Philipp Schindler

NFL Sunday Ticket, a stronghold of football fans in the United States since 1994, is getting a slew of digital upgrades as it moves from its longtime home on DirecTV to YouTube this fall.

“We believe there are many great opportunities to differentiate the user and manufacturer experience with our unique capabilities,” Philipp Schindler, Google’s chief business officer, told Wall Street analysts in parent company Alphabet’s fourth quarter. “Any YouTube viewer interested in the NFL can now access the entire Sunday Ticket offering with one click. This is the first time a Sunday ticket is available A la carte for fans.”

Schindler pointed out that a picture-in-picture feature, which allows viewers to scroll through games of their choice, is in the works, along with features like chat.

Google reportedly pays $2 billion annually for its daily gaming suite. The tech company has not yet announced pricing or other details, but plans to offer it either as an add-on for its more than 5 million subscribers to pay for YouTube TV, or as a separate option through the company’s channel store. The football talk was timely in the run-up to the Super Bowl on Feb. 12 and also served as a welcome distraction for executives after Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube, reported another weak quarter. YouTube saw an 8% year-over-year decline in ad revenue during that period.

Many longtime subscribers to Sunday Ticket, once a valuable driver of satellite subscriptions for DirecTV but faltering of late, opted for technology upgrades when the NFL struck a deal with a streaming partner. DirecTV, now privately owned by AT&T and private equity firm TPG, also suffered embarrassing technical glitches last season. League commissioner Roger Goodell indicated in the summer of 2022 that Sunday Ticket would transition to streaming in a deal originally intended as a fall announcement, but negotiations with Apple and other bidders have been complex. YouTube finally won last December.

Schindler teased a number of updates on the deals without going into specifics.

“For example, on YouTube TV we are building the ability for subscribers to see multiple screens simultaneously and on YouTube [connected TV] We will be adding new features specific to the Sunday Ticket experience such as comments, chats, polls and so on,” he said. “On the developer side, imagine all the creative possibilities they could create with exclusive NFL content, behind-the-scenes access at events and so on. We are very excited to see what they will do in long form, short form, live streams and more.”

The YouTube deal further expands the NFL’s streaming reach. Last fall, the league began an exclusive 11-year relationship with Amazon Thursday night football on Primevideo. Media partners NBCUniversal, Disney and Paramount have all begun phasing exclusive streaming shows to their respective digital platforms.