Thursday, December 22, 2022 9:37 am1 Comment

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Apple has reportedly given up its quest to land exclusive rights to NFL Sunday Ticket, a subscription-only package that allows viewers to watch all out-of-market Sunday afternoon NFL games. Alphabet subsidiary YouTube is now thought to be the frontrunner to land the deal.

Daniel Kaplan for The Athletic:

[I]t had appeared for some time it would be Apple that would take the popular Sunday Ticket fully into the digital universe (incumbent DirecTV did allow streaming in areas where its satellite dishes were infeasible). The NFL longed to be in business with arguably the globe’s most important company and spent much of the past year trying to make that happen. And the deal seemed like a natural for Apple, which is trying to grow Apple TV Plus.

There are some obvious answers. Apple reportedly wanted to pay less than the NFL sought so it could offer the product at lower prices than incumbent DirecTV, but the NFL’s contracts with Fox and CBS disallowed that…

Apple and the NFL also could not agree on whether the company would get the right to distribute Sunday Ticket on as yet non-existent platforms. Apple is heavily investing in virtual reality and augmented reality, nascent platforms in which sports are so far largely not viewed. As a result, Apple wanted what is dubbed known and unknown rights, individuals familiar with the NFL and Apple said. In other words, there is no known virtual reality market for Sunday Ticket, but there might be one day.

Imagine a virtual reality device offering fans a Sunday Ticket experience where it is as if they are viewing from the 50-yard line seats, said Tom Richardson, senior vice president of Mercury Intermedia and an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s sports management program. Such a platform might seem a long way off, but Richardson said it could be coming in the next 24 months.

MacDailyNews Take: It’s likely that the NFL considers AR/VR (mixed-reality) as a future media category that they can sell in a separate rights deal, in which case, Apple might still be considered a very interested party.

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[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]