Report: YouTube is in the running for NFL Sunday Ticket

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A report published this weekend by The New York Times indicates that YouTube is the final bidder for the NFL's flagship content package, NFL Sunday Ticket. There's still no winner in the bidding process, but Google's video division is jumping into the fray to do battle with Apple, which the Times says is "considered the frontrunner" in the competition. 'OK. The winning bid is expected to be over $2.5 billion per season.

NFL Sunday Ticket offers all regular season Sunday afternoon out-of-market games as one giant cable package for about $300 a year. Nationally televised games and your local games aren't included in the package, but it's everything else you wouldn't normally be able to watch - around 13 extra games per week. In the US, the service has been (mostly) exclusive to satellite TV provider DirecTV for years, with the last deal signed in 2014 for $1.5 billion a year. DirecTV's current deal expires at the end of the upcoming season, and due to plummeting television subscribers, the beleaguered DirecTV no longer has the money to restock with the NFL. This means Sunday Ticket is up for grabs as the next major chess piece in The Streaming Wars.

Amazon was the first tech giant to dabble in the NFL world by acquiring another major NFL package, Thursday Night Football, for $1 billion a year. Amazon has already dipped its toes in NFL waters by simulcasting Fox games on Thursday nights, but this year Amazon's Prime Video exclusivity means Amazon has to do its own production work. So far, it appears to be gearing up for top-notch production: The company has poached legendary play-by-play announcer Al Michaels from NBC and hired 24-time Emmy Award-winning NBC executive producer Fred Gaudelli ( who is executive producer NBC and Amazon's NFL packages now). Amazon has also hired a slew of former NFL players to host the pregame, halftime and postgame shows: Hall of Fame tight end Tony Gonzalez, future Hall of Fame cornerback Richard Sherman and recently retired quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick. It looks like Amazon is sparing no expense.

While producing Amazon's Thursday Night Football involved starting an entire football operation from scratch, putting it in the same league as Fox, CBS, NBC and ESPN, Sunday Ticket requires a lot less work of production. The winning company would only have to simulcast existing local television productions across the United States.

The report lists Apple, Amazon, ESPN+ (Disney) and YouTube (Google) as the major players in the deal. The Times reports that "a final agreement has been delayed by negotiations over a concurrent sale of NFL media assets, including the NFL Network, RedZone Channel and NFL+." The League has a lot of small packages to distribute in the age of streaming.

NBL Director of Media and Business Brian Rolapp told the New York Times, "A number of companies are in a strong position to potentially land the Sunday Ticket, but we still have a ways to go in this process."

The report says Apple has made getting the package "a priority," but it's unclear if Google is in it to win it or just want to raise the price. We frequently see Google participate in these Big Tech auctions, but it rarely closes a deal. The company made a lot of noise about its participation in the FCC's 700 MHz Block C auction in 2008, but mostly bluffed its way through the auction so that the price reached an "access open". Google didn't win the $4.5 billion auction for Nortel's patents in 2011, and it couldn't close the deal during its Wh...