YouTube TV to Host NFL Sunday Ticket
By Movieguide® Contributor
In a recent blog post, YouTube announced pricing for their NFL Sunday Ticket, and the features that this program will include for consumers.
“Starting today, fans can lock in inaugural pricing for next season’s NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube TV and YouTube Primetime Channels,” the blog post said. “Regardless of where you purchase, NFL Sunday Ticket will be available across web, TV, mobile and tablet devices that support YouTube and YouTube TV, with no hidden fees or satellite dish needed.”
The package will include all out-of-market, regular-season Sunday games broadcast on FOX and CBS.
The NFL Sunday ticket ended its three-decade exclusive run with DirecTV last year as the league looked to pull from the deep pockets of tech companies. Along with NFL Sunday Ticket moving to YouTube TV, last year the NFL locked in an 11-year deal with Prime Video and Thursday Night Football.
To celebrate the first year of Sunday Ticket on YouTube TV, anyone who signs up before June 6th can purchase the package at a $100 discount. Current YouTube TV users can add on the Sunday Ticket for $249 during the presale and can group in NFL Redzone for an extra $40. YouTube is also offering a plan for those who wish to purchase the Sunday ticket without paying for YouTube TV as well, pricing the Sunday Ticket at $349 during the presale and $389 if they wish to add the NFL Redzone.
Sunday Ticket will include YouTube TV’s new multiview feature, allowing fans to stream multiple games on one screen, along with social features like chatting and polls. The Sunday Ticket experience will also include the ability to view key plays, Fantasy Football data, real-time stats, and the ability to hide spoilers.
Movieguide® previously reported on YouTube TV:
YouTube TV is rolling out a “multiview” feature that will allow users to view as many as four linear streams simultaneously.
“Just in time for March Madness,” the new feature will allow viewers “to switch audio and captions between streams, and jump in and out of a fullscreen view of a game,” YouTube’s blog post explained.
The service will roll out gradually to the 5-million-plus subscriber base, becoming completely available over the next several months. With March Madness serving as a trial run, the company plans to have worked out all the kinks by the time NFL Sunday Ticket hits the platform later this year.
While multiview features have been available through cable TV for years, YouTube’s version was only made possible recently due to recent advancements in technology. German Cheung, the engineering lead for YouTube TV’s core experience team, explained that a typical multiview experience “requires a high-end user device to process and playback multiple streams at once.”
YouTube moved all of the processing onto its own servers, cutting out the stress on the user’s device.
“This allows all subscribers to use the feature, regardless of their home equipment, because when it’s streamed to them, their device sees only one live feed, instead of two or four,” Cheung explained.
This technology was really just a rework of a feature already accessible on YouTube Live, which allows streamers to go live together, combining two streams into one feed. Rather than creating something from the ground up, the team could use what YouTube Live had already created and rework it for TV, allowing the team to bring it to market much faster.
While the new feature will be relatively bare bones in its early access phase, the team plans to refine and add more functionality to multiview in the future.
