The company once regarded as the frontrunner for NFL Sunday Ticket, Apple, has opted to bow out of talks, leaving it to Amazon vs. Google for the rights to the NFL package.
Mike Florio for Pro Football Talk:
Buried in an item on Puck.news from Dylan Byer and Julia Alexander regarding recent changes at the top of Disney is an NFL bombshell: Apple has bowed out of the bidding for the out-of-market package the DirecTV will relinquish in only 23 days.
Here’s the key quote, from Byer: “I’m now told that Apple, once seen as a frontrunner for the rights, has also backed out of those negotiations — not because they can’t afford it, but because they don’t see the logic. So it’s down to Amazon and Google, and there’s certainly a logic there for both companies: Amazon can use it to drive Prime subscriptions; Google can use it to fuel its YouTube TV business.”
This also means the Disney/ESPN has exited the bidding, too.
MacDailyNews Take: Could also be a negotiating tactic, but we’ll all know for sure when the NFL announces the new Sunday Ticket deal.
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Gotta know when to fold ‘em.
This is the right call for now.
the NFL is one of the most sexist organizations in the USA. in the whole history of the league not one female has every started as QB. Imagine any other industry where not one single women has ever been employed in the top job positions. the NFL is more concerned with profits and winning then they are with representing the communities that consume their product. 🙂
its telling when their professed ideology meets the fundimental reality of there very existence. the woke will eat their own
Women do not belong in men’s sports anymore than trans people belong in girl’s bathrooms. You are sick to inject radical leftist policies on anyone…
Too bad you can’t tell sarcasm when it’s totally obvious!
Safely, I’m just making sure…
I hope they end up with it. I will have a hard time hiving my money to the other two.
Apple is gaining on–in likeness–Amazon and Google. There’s still a difference, but the chasm is no where like it used to be. I wish Apple would put a definitive & solid stake in the ground to clearly NOT be a vassal of the state…like is AMZN and Goog.
It didn’t makes sense for Apple?… um, if Apple didn’t want the NFL they wouldn’t have started in the first place and come all this way.
And odds are low they did it as a mere rouse to cause others to overpay.
Rather, we got an inkling late this week in what was likely going sideways: It was claimed Apple wanted to offer Sunday ticket for no extra charge to Apple TV+ subscribers….
What’s lost in translation are the details. Did that means anyone at $6.99 would get Sunday ticket or just Apple One subscriptions or only the premier subscribers?…
Financially speaking, base subscribers to Apple TV+ at $6.99 was likely never on the table…
But if the NFL started, or continued in negotiations, to tell Apple how to go to market (IMO -highly likely with that arrogant leadership), if there is one thing Apple won’t do is have outside companies tell them what to do (just ask Intel… or ANY supplier).
The NFL likely pushed the “let us tell you how you will do it” button one too many times and Appel said “but-bye. We would have liked to include your product, but well, we’ve done quite well without the NFL Sunday Ticket to-date, so we’ll stay focused and disciplined and not bend the knee. Rather we move on.”
And the NFL will NOT come back to Apple.far too arrogant than that.
NFL will likely wind up going from a nascent Satellite offering to a YouTube TV which has their own issues. It by all means, end working with Apple, the company with premier products and the highest earner customers in the world with money to spend like no other customer base – great idea….
Disappointing, if true. Hope Google or Amazon will do a good job with it (very skeptical of Amazon). The NFL’s streaming service is absolutely awful and DirecTV is one of the all time gouging rip-offs in media history.
Hope this story is true. The amount of money spent to televise the NFL (and other sports) is insane, and I don’t want to pay to subsidize it. Back when I had cable, I didn’t want to pay the $5 extra/month for ESPN, and I don’t want Apple TV+ to hike their prices to pay for the NFL either.
The problem with the NFL is that they have sold off so many bits and parts to different platforms (ESPN, CBS, FOX, NBC, Amazon) that providing a customer-friendly approach to watching football is not possible.
Apple ran into the same thing with music – the content owners did not have a big enough vision and Apple had to sell them on it. I’m willing to be that Apple has a much bigger vision than the other two without tying subscribers to already pricey subscription packages.