“This past March DirecTV re-signed the NFL to Sunday Ticket, extending their exclusive rights to 2014. The last deal, inked in 2004, had a 2010 expiration,” Murphy Mac writes for Seeking Alpha. “Where was Apple during the negotiation?”
“The deal DirecTV signed in March was for four years, a billion dollars per year. Sounds like DirecTV can’t survive without the NFL, and that should have given Apple leverage at the bargaining table,” Murphy writes. “Apple has billions in cash they could have tapped for a deal
“The NFL on Apple TV [would lift] the device from the ‘hobby’ status Apple has assigned it,” Murphy writes. “Buyers would benefit multiple ways over DirecTV: No monthly charge. No dish. No paying for games they won’t watch. No contract.”
Murphy writes, “If Jobs and Cook didn’t negotiate with the NFL their stockholders should wonder why. Apple can always try again in 2014. Rumors are flying that Cupertino has Apple TV announcements lined up for next month. It’s doubtful any of them are as big as an NFL deal would have been.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz” and “Always Right” for the heads up.]
Good. Useless crap anyway.
Without subscription, how would Apple hope to recoup $4 billion + for the rights?
Bad. Wouldve been awesome.
There isn’t fast enough broadband for this. Apple would have ended up delivering a service that people would have been dissatisfied with.
I’m sure the NFL wanted too much money and even though Apple has a nice war chest, they shouldn’t just spend it frivolously. The question really is this, “Does Apple believe that they can move more than a billion dollars worth of Apple TVs to account for spending a billion dollars just to say they have access to NFL programming?”
Who says that Apple can’t negotiate a separate deal?
DirecTV might have exclusive broadcast rights for the games, but the NFL deal with them doesn’t necessarily restrict online distribution. While AppleTV would play it on one’s TV, it would be online distribution, not broadcast distribution…
Stupid! How in the world would Apple deliver the programming? The local internet couldn’t handle the traffic that would result from all the HD NFL games streaming at one time. Imagine if everyone on one street was watching 1 or 2 HD games at once. No one would get a decent feed.
Yeah i don’t get it? AppleTV isn’t used to stream live footage and I don’t think there is enough bandwidth to cover the millions upon millions watching NFL. I don’t want to download a game after it’s been played. The real losers here are the cable companies. They lost out on the NFL deal not Apple. Stupid article. I can only pray that Apple is working with cable companies to put a cable card slot in ATV that way it’s one step closer to a true media center.
What a stupid article. Who is this idiot to say Apple dropped the ball on something they would never be interested in anyway? They would have never recouped $1 billion per year, even if Apple TV sales skyrocketed.
Why waste money on an NFL Deal. American Football is stupid and played by a bunch of rich sissies!! anyway. Real men play Australian Rules Football.
how in the world would you have watched the games on an Apple TV live? In HD?
seriously – this is one of the dumbest things i’ve seen today, and i’ve already seen stupid stuff this morning.
@demon
i agree. its like apple getting an exclusive deal with NASCAR. totally pointless.
You stupid, Apple is sells their products internationally. And we don’t care about American Football. We like the real football (you know a game actually played with only using your feet)
@Sqe
Yeah, we know all about futbol. Biggest yawn on planet earth.
I suspect Apple knows more about growing my investment than Murphy does. They make money selling great products. He earns his income by persuading people to read his opinions.
The NFL demands too much money for it’s product for it to be worthwhile for Apple. The subscription fee would have been enormous. Far more people have DirecTV than AppleTV.
@Sqe oh then how does the ball get back into play after it’s kicked out of bounds?
Sounds like Murphy has an Apple TV and hates Direct TV, to me. Nice wishful thinking, though.
That is impressively dumb.
This article is just useless.
“The NFL demands too much money for it’s product for it to be worthwhile for Apple. The subscription fee would have been enormous. Far more people have DirecTV than AppleTV”
Actually your last sentence is why Apple should have bid, to drive an Apple TV hardware/subscribers as DirectTV has obviously leveraged NFL Sunday ticket to do. However, there is an actual Apple TV subscription model/content, even with NFL Sunday ticket they would not have enough subscribers to make money.
football fans usually live in trailers in shitsville, nowhere, with no broadband, banging on their dells, because their wal-mart dial up isp can’t deliver porn or football scores fast enough. same with their nascar buddies, when they’re not busy bringing guns to protests or shouting down other citizens at town hall meetings.
WTF? I can’t wait for August to be over so we have some real news and all these self proclaimed capitalist geniuses all go back under their rocks.
I assume “Follow my team” will still be available on the iTunes store. Exactly what else should Apple be doing? Although it would be nice if “Follow my team” were in 720p….
Demon + sqe = troll.
@ Demon
Ozzie Rules, or Rugby.
None of this Nancy-boy Football League.
Eh, the futbol is OK too.
who cares.
I don’t see Apple getting into the business of live TV anytime soon. And from the NFL’s standpoint, far too few Apple TV’s as compared to dishes to make it worthwhile.