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For those that subscribed to the inaugural year of the NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube, who is not renewing and why?

Anytime I've seen this topic come up on other forums, there's always a fight between the "streaming nazis" and cable TV subscribers. I'm not looking for that so please refrain from being argumentative. I'm just curious to know the reasons.

My wife and I are long time subscribers to NFL Sunday Ticket but were terribly disappointed by the product on YouTube and have opted to spend our money this year going to a local sports bar that allows you to make reservations (you can even tell them the game(s) you're interested in and they'll seat you closest to those TVs). We figured for the $499 most subscribers are paying, that should give us slightly over $30 per week toward breakfast (we are typically in Vegas 2x a year during the season so that's 16 weeks watching at home). Our biggest issue (despite all the login issues that their customer service department couldn't figure out for nearly half the season, and the streaming issues) was the loss of the NFL game mix. We have no interest in "settling" for a 4 screen presentation that YouTube chooses for us. Some people are content with just watching "their" team or are OK with the four screens (usually people that didn't have the game mix and don't know what they're missing). For us, because we are in multiple fantasy football leagues and wager on multiple games, we want 8 games (I remember being pissed missing out on most of the scoring on the Mia/Den game last year due to this stupid 4 screen setup).

TIA for keeping the conversation civil.

I have subscribed to Sunday Ticket every year since 1996. Prior to that I got the free backhauls on my big dish dating back into the 80's. For the first time ever i am not re-upping this year. I got really po'ed at the NFL moving more and more games to streaming. Some viewing windows I was literally getting 1 extra game. Plus I was less than happy with youtube tv. Finally I will likely be in Vegas 4 or 5 of the Sunday's. When home I will just keep a TV on the local game and another on red zone.

Thanks for the reply.

I couldn't agree more on all the separate charges for Peacock and the other streams, Doing that for a playoff game was ridiculous last year and as much as Goodell wants to sugar coat it, that Mia/KC game would have been one of the top rated of the weekend had they not pulled that stunt. The Nielsen ratings had it as 1/2 the viewership of two of the other games that weekend that had 40 million views. I think only one game that weekend had a lower rating. Hopefully viewers continue to boycott those games as I think the NFL has gotten a little too big for its britches. Had they not had guaranteed income from the streaming networks, and had to rely totally on ad revenue, I think they would have knocked this BS off already (I'm pretty sure advertisers would have balked paying the same price for a game that got half the viewers).

What I find laughable is I know many young people that never experienced the NFL game mix on Direct TV, but they are so anti-cable that they don't care. Many of them don't realize they are paying just as much with all their multiple streams.

I was a DTV Sunday Ticket subscriber every season from the inception. Nearly all of the seasons I never paid for because I called and asked for it due to being a loyal customer. I've been with DTV 26 years.

Last season I refused to go to yt for the NFL. When DTV said they would have the red zone that was ok even thought I never watched it during the subscriber years.

I do a split screen for two games or maybe one game and the 8 or 4 box channel but now. It's one local game and the red zone. This along with a lap top where I find a site that is streaming all of the games and they are in HD without any buffering.

They got cute at the end of the season by blocking the Brave app since it blocks pop ups and commercials.

I have Peacock but only because of the WWE PPV, you just can't beat the cost for all of the PPV and I let it expire and find a code to only pay $29.99 which to me is worth it. Now the great thing about Brave is this, I load up Peacock and it gets upset that it has the ad blocker. I simply click the button and poof never an ad during any show I would want to watch but like I said WWE PPV is 99.9% and I did watch that KC game last year. The reason they did that was they figured the Swifties would buy a month or a year for a shot to see Taylor at the game. This is the ONLY reason they did that.

As for this year, it will be the same set up but I'll likely have to find a new stream site which is fine, there are plenty of them out there, I just need to find a really good one.

They are trying to market to the younger crowd and these streaming sites will fork over BILLIONS of $$$ to get them in the door and market them for life. Us older guys they aren't going to sell us anything at this point and they know it. So we are old news to them, they got all they could n the prior years.

I agree with you Freak on the "Swifties" and marketing to the younger crowd. With that said, they'd be smarter to try to supplement with the aforementioned but not throw out the baby with the bath water by pissing off the older crowd. The average age of the NFL fan is 55 so that's a good portion of your audience you're messing with.

As much as the NFL will try to spin by claiming there was this boon in viewership, they've actually been fairly flat for years. Not saying that's a bad thing as many programs go down, but if you look at historical numbers, the viewership has averaged 16.6 million for the last 10 years (last year was 17.9 and one of the lowest was the first year of the pandemic at 15.4). I don't think relying on "Swifties" is a good long term strategy (yes viewership of younger females was up substantially last year). The younger crowd doesn't even seem to have the patience to watch an entire game as sports try to find ways to shorten the length. Lord forbid her and Travis breakup and they instantly lose most of those fans while dropping some of their older fans.

Clearly my optics are from someone that is a complete degenerate when it comes to football (and shy of gambling on individual games, I've turned my wife into one also). I could have never convinced her in years past to get a massive TV. But it was no problem convincing her to get the 82 inch screen in our living room because of football and in particular, the NFL game mix). And as some of these 100 inch screens start coming down in price, we'll be replacing it with that. Needless to say, I hit my head against a wall when I hear some of these young people say they watch games on their phone or their Ipads. I can't imagine even watching the four game presentation that YouTube offers on an Ipad (and the game mix would be out of the question). Ultimately, I think many of these younger viewers are simply fans of a specific team so they don't care about having a setup like a sportsbook.

If the NFL truly wanted to capture their entire possible viewing audience, they would offer the NFL game mix, give streaming options for those in apartments or rentals that can't put up a satellite dish, keep the cable option, and also give people accessibility to only purchase a single team for those that are simply fans of that team. And I don't buy for a second they couldn't do that. They could still have their one offs on Peacock and the like (even if many like me are not fans of it), but they'd be giving all interested parties what they want for the majority of games. I'll never understand this "all of nothing" mentality of the streaming nazis. Why not satisfy both sides and keep everyone happy?

I think basically the NFL wants to monopolize every method of distribution to prevent any potential for future competition. Much like they had all the major networks involved in some type of package they would very much like very streaming service of any size involved with them. That way they can pressure any streamer who may want to give an opportunity to an upstart. Sure it's illegal but when you never lose a court case who's going to fight.

Agree 70sman but they did lose their recent court fight, and of course are appealing it. Should they lose their appeal(s), I'll be curious to see the impact. I don't really care as much on the refund side as much as I'd just like to see the monopoly broken up and then maybe everyone can get what they want (i.e. NFL game mix, streaming, individual team options). There's no reason these individual platforms need to be the only game in town or force people to find illegal streams that usually aren't high quality.

They did win their appeal. The judge said the jury erred and set aside their verdict. That is why I made that comment. There is no way to sue a collective of 32 billionaires successfully in this country.

I was not aware of that. Thanks for the info.

Amazon Prime Video: Thursday Night Football games, Weeks 1-17, the Black Friday Game, Nov. 29. and one Wild Card game.

Netflix: Dec. 25, 2024, two Christmas Games (Week 17)

Peacock will air (exclusively) the Week 1 Packers vs. Eagles game live from Brazil, and stream all games airing on NBC (SNF) throughout the season.

ESPN+ will carry 25 NFL games this season, including one ESPN+ exclusive game (Chargers vs. Cardinals, Oct. 21 at 9 p.m. ET)

Surprise!

It's crazy how many networks will be covering the NFL now. They want you to subscribe to all this stuff.

Eventually they will dilute the value of Sunday Ticket to the point that more people will drop it. They need an allin ticket. Buy this package and get every game.

There’s a workaround to the Amazon games and there’s no need to pay for it. They broadcast the games on twitch. There’s nothing to sign up for. Not many people figured it out and paid Amazon to have access.

We will know in week one if anything changes but I haven’t seen it.


Not really sure why they have games on espn+ if only one is exclusive. Unfortunately I live in the home market and will see it on local tv. I prefer when they have bye weeks. That must be a double header Monday night game seeing it starts at 9pm eastern.

Netflix and peacock bahhhhh