why didn’t NFL Grab a bite at Apple?
The NFL is poised to score another mega media deal this week as the league sells Sunday ticket rights to Google’s YouTube and YouTube TV, moving unmarketed game packages into the streaming universe. It seems that.
Deeper
NFL signs deal with YouTube for Sunday ticket rights
For a while, however, it seemed that Apple would be the one to bring the popular Sunday Ticket into a fully digital world (the incumbent DirecTV would allow streaming in areas where satellite dishes weren’t feasible). was). The NFL has spent most of the past year coveting deals with arguably the most important company in the world. trying to make it happenWith Apple looking to grow the Apple TV Plus, the deal seemed like a no-brainer.
Earlier this year, the NFL won sponsorship of the Super Bowl halftime show from Apple, but media talks broke down a few weeks ago. why?
There are some obvious answers. Apple reportedly wanted to pay less than what the NFL asked for, allowing it to offer products at lower prices than incumbent DirecTV, but the NFL and Fox and CBS ‘s deal didn’t allow for that (lower ticket prices on Sundays could drive viewers away from the network window on Sunday afternoons). DirecTV’s Sunday Ticket offers start at around $300 per season.
Seahawks receiver DK Metcalfe at the 2020 NFL Sunday Ticket event. This will be the final season of his DirecTV package, which has been on the air since 1994. (Peter Barreras / Associated Press)
Also, Google’s media strategy is more robust than Apple’s, YouTube TV is a growing digital multi-channel platform, and YouTube itself is growing. 2.5 billion monthly users.
A person close to the NFL said, “Other tech companies are far more advanced when it comes to their media and broadcast business models.” Google and YouTube are far ahead, Apple is really behind.”
Apple and the NFL also couldn’t agree on whether the company would acquire the rights to distribute Sunday Tickets on platforms that don’t yet exist.Apple is investing heavily in virtual reality and augmented reality, an early platform on which the sport has seen little so far. As a result, Apple wanted what it called Known Rights and Unknown Rights, he said, according to a source familiar with the NFL and Apple. That said, there is no known virtual reality market for Sunday Ticket, but there may be one someday.
Tom Richardson, senior vice president of Mercury Intermedia and Adjunct Professor of Sports Management at Columbia University, said virtual reality will give fans the Sunday ticket experience as if they were watching from their seats at the 50-yard line. Imagine a device. While such a platform may seem a long way off, Richardson said it could happen within the next 24 months.
“It’s a well-known fact that Apple is about to grow big in AR and VR,” said Richardson. “And it’s been widely reported over the last few years that ’23 could be a breakout year. I think we’re looking at a different technology landscape in the world, which at this point in time is likely to be the consumer electronics landscape by the end of the decade, and we’re seeing a lot of growth in the world of immersive media experiences. I have.”
Richardson worked in the NFL in the 1990s, NHL, and recalled a similar situation that occurred in the emerging new digital world when a company asked if it would be nice for media rights under negotiation to be visible to “everything.” And just like now, the answer was no.
“The league is uncompromising, and Apple is a $2.5 trillion company.
Apple’s deal with Major League Soccer to stream all games is believed to be open-ended. MLS Didn’t reply to your comment.
Why doesn’t the NFL agree with the “unknown” language in the contract? never. But we may also see future platforms for AR and VR as new media categories worthy of another deal.
It wasn’t possible to determine where the pending Google deal would be resolved on this issue, but considering it was such a lockdown between the NFL and Apple, it would be nice to see the league make concessions. It’s hard. Google has its own AR and VR efforts.
apple too asked about wider rights was available than
Former Fox Sports executive Patrick Craigs said Apple and the NFL were never on the same page. “So[Apple]kept learning, like, ‘Well, we want to do a five-year term. ‘No, you have to do a ten-year term.’ ‘No, you can’t have them.’ ‘We need exclusivity.”No. ‘”
The value of Sunday tickets to fans has also declined over the years as more and more games were previously broadcast only locally. This made the out-of-home package worthwhile for fans outside his home team market.
“When Sunday Ticket came out[in1994]there was clearly an important game you couldn’t miss every week,” Crakes says. “Okay, now we have three or four national windows by the end of the year. We’ve got a game on Saturday, we’ve got a game on Christmas. So all these games are everywhere, and the biggest and best games are finally going to be It means we have a flexible schedule in place to make sure it happens: Sunday Night Football for sure, and next year we’ll start with Monday Night Football.”
Nearly 30 years ago, when DirecTV launched the Sunday Ticket, Thursday Night Football took games from the Sunday afternoon contest slate, leaving the NFL network without a handful of exclusive games. These TNF games are now being streamed by Amazon, who later pushed the Sunday Ticket.
The NFL was seeking well over the $1.5 billion annual average received from DirecTV. The figure came clean from many pundits as satellite operators suffered losses at low numbers. But the SportsBusiness Journal reports Wednesday that the NFL has earned him $2.5 billion (it’s unclear if that includes the bar and restaurant market, which could be cut out of the deal). there is).
It’s not the first time the NFL has taken pundits by surprise.When the league bought the TNF package, it was making about $650 million a year, but incumbent Fox and other traditional players are bidding. I didn’t. Amazon proved the power of his NFL content at $1.1 billion a year.
One thing is clear, Apple, which created the home computer market and the smartphone business after that, is doing just fine and will find other ways to grow Apple TV Plus without the glorious NFL charm.
“Apple is Apple,” said Richardson, who wrote for a magazine called Apple magazine in the 1980s. “And they always seem to get it.”
(Top photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images)
