Sports bars will now need a streaming box to offer NFL Sunday Ticket.
Sportico reports that EverPass Media sent an email to customers saying it would be the exclusive commercial option for NFL Sunday Ticket beginning with the 2027 NFL season. As a result, it will be the first time since the 1994 season that the service is not available on DirecTV.
DirecTV’s original contract for NFL Sunday Ticket ended after the 2022 season, when it was replaced by YouTube. At the same time, EverPass Media was formed in 2023 by the NFL, in partnership with RedBird Capital, specifically to distribute the commercial rights to NFL Sunday Ticket.
EverPass Media reached a three-year agreement with DirecTV in May 2023, which allowed Sunday Ticket to continue to be sold to DirecTV cable customers. However, according to Sportico, that service is also set to end.
Instead of satellite, bars must use streaming hardware, either proprietary EverPass boxes or Spectrum’s Xumo boxes. In a statement to Sportico, EverPass said their hardware is “delivering a solution built for where the industry is going, not where it has been.”
In a message on its DirecTV for Business Blog, DirecTV said that “EverPass Media has unfortunately failed to meaningfully engage with DIRECTV following months of proposals at terms consistent with the prior agreement,” adding, “EverPass is forcing businesses to adopt its streaming-only distribution model rather than continuing to work with the established platform that bars and restaurants rely on.”
It remains to be seen whether or not a move to streaming will meaningfully impact bars as DirecTV suggests. EverPass says their platform has “business-grade reliability.”
Nevertheless, for bars, this represents a seismic shift in how NFL Sunday Ticket is shown. While fast internet at businesses is seemingly more abundant than ever before, Sunday Ticket bars will need to ensure their internet is powerful enough for several different streams at once to avoid buffering, outages, or lag at the worst possible time.
Bars betting on EverPass will not just do so for the NFL, however. EverPass is not just the home of Sunday Ticket but also has deals with Peacock, Amazon, Apple, ESPN, Paramount+, YES Network, and the Chicago Sports Network for sports events.
DirecTV still retains the satellite only rights to NHL Center Ice, NBA League Pass and MLB Extra Innings. In theory, that means that some bars could be forced to have both EverPass and DirecTV.
This seems to be another major moment in the decline of cable in the United States. As has continued to be the case, it’s not clear that the streaming revolution will meaningfully benefit the sports-watching experience.