So far, YouTube’s most prominent foray into live sports has been its takeover of NFL Sunday Ticket.
The $2 billion annual deal later gave way to a one-off Week 1 game in 2025, but YouTube has thus far held off on other big packages. This season, YouTube reportedly backed out of talks with the NFL on a five-game package that ultimately went entirely to rival Netflix.
YouTube prefers to fit sports into the habitual rhythm with which its users already engage with it. CNBC’s Alex Sherman reported this week that YouTube prefers buying sports packages “in bulk” to present “an easy consumer message” so fans know to go to YouTube for certain games. This aligns with the value of Sunday Ticket.
However, as it aims to expand its live sports portfolio, YouTube could lose Sunday Ticket. Sherman also reported that YouTube executives are prepared for the “possibility” that the NFL could “deconstruct” the out-of-market package under its next broadcast rights package, which will begin in the early 2030s.
What would that mean? The NFL allows Sunday Ticket subscribers to watch live games that are not broadcast in their local market. Instead, the league could create even more national inventory by making most or all games in each Sunday afternoon window available nationwide. This would allow any team’s fanbase to watch that team’s game, while also increasing the theoretical reach of each game it sells.
Seemingly, the only way to make this work would be to partner with a streaming service. If and when the NFL reaches a point where it sells Sunday afternoon games exclusively to streamers, viewers could easily pick any game aired by that company. The experience would be similar to watching a tennis tournament on ESPN+ or the Olympics on Peacock.
With several years to go before its current deals expire, the NFL doesn’t need to reimagine its offering today. The revelation that YouTube is ready for such a move, however, signals that it is on the table. YouTube’s Sunday Ticket deal ends after the 2029-30 season, the same year the league can opt out of its deals with Fox, CBS, NBC and Prime Video. The NFL can opt out of the ESPN deal the following year.
Recently, Awful Announcing’s Drew Lerner imagined a world in which the league turned the 4:25 p.m. ET game into a full-blown national standalone window. The NFL has recently put games on more holidays and weekdays, weakening the 1 p.m. slate. Viewers have been trained to tune in to watch games on an assortment of platforms in recent years. It could rip the Band-Aid off entirely and turn the early-afternoon window into more of a buffet, letting viewers across the country choose which game they want to watch.
Of course, the money would have to work. The league would want to make back the $2 billion it currently gets for Sunday Ticket. By creating more nationally accessible inventory, the NFL would need to make a compelling case to broadcasters that its deconstructed package is more valuable than the current arrangement, which creates artificial scarcity by regionalizing games. The league would also want to ensure this model doesn’t hurt access and viewership too much.