YouTube is once again the exclusive provider of NFL Sunday Ticket. 2024 marks year two of a seven-year agreement between Google and the NFL, so the service isn’t coming back to DirecTV anytime soon, if ever.
YouTube offers an NFL Sunday Ticket subscription for $479 for the 2024 season, or $519 if you bundle NFL RedZone. YouTube TV subscribers get a $100 discount, bringing the price to $379 for the season, though YouTube TV itself costs $73 per month, and NFL RedZone is an $11 per month add-on.
If you’re new to streaming and are looking to watch out-of-market football, you’ll need to move carefully and avoid getting stuck with a Sunday Ticket plan that doesn’t have what you need (or, conversely, is way too expensive for what you want). Let’s break down the details.
How does NFL Sunday Ticket work on YouTube?
First, let’s clarify the difference between YouTube TV and plain old YouTube:
- YouTube is the service best-known for its millions of free, ad-supported videos. Among other things, it also offers a marketplace called “Primetime Channels” for subscription video services, one of which is NFL Sunday Ticket.
- YouTube TV is a separate service that’s basically a replacement for cable TV. For $73 per month, it offers a big bundle of pay TV channels along with an array of optional add-ons, one of which is NFL Sunday Ticket.
In both cases, the core NFL Sunday Ticket offering is the same: You’ll get live access to out-of-market games, a “multiview” feature for watching up to four games at a time, and DVR capabilities.
The difference with YouTube TV is that you’ll also get a full pay TV package to go with it. If you want to watch local and nationally-televised games and aren’t getting them any other way—for instance, with an over-the-air antenna—the YouTube TV bundle will likely be your best option.
Note that YouTube is offering monthly install options for both packages, but you’ll still owe the full amount either way, and your subscription will auto-renew come next year unless you cancel beforehand. (The best time to do so is right after signing up.)
Here’s a full price and feature breakdown for both packages:
| YouTube TV | YouTube | |
|---|---|---|
| Regular price with Sunday Ticket | $379/year + $73/month | $479/year |
| Price with NFL RedZone | $379/year + $84/month | $519/year |
| Price with RedZone, but without NFL Sunday Ticket | $84/month | N/A |
| Local and night games, plus the playoffs | Yes | No |
| Cloud DVR service? | Yes | via YouTube TV app |
| Multi-view? | Yes | Yes |
| Does the subscription auto-renew? | Yes | Yes |
Does NFL Sunday Ticket include all NFL games?
Once more, with feeling: NFL Sunday Ticket does not include local or nationally broadcast NFL games. With the NFL RedZone add-on, you might occasionally see local action through that channel’s whiparound coverage, but otherwise you’ll be limited to out-of-market games on Sunday afternoons only.
Primetime Channels is a way to subscribe to video services from inside the regular YouTube app.
Jared Newman / Foundry
That means if you subscribe to NFL Sunday Ticket through regular YouTube, you’ll need to look elsewhere for local games, Sunday Night Football on NBC, Monday Night Football on ESPN, and the entirety of the NFL playoffs.
And no matter which package you choose, you’ll still miss Thursday Night Football on Amazon Prime and Netflix’s exclusive Christmas Day games. Those games aren’t included with any Sunday Ticket offering.
But by now, you should see the potential for chaos: With YouTube taking pre-orders, some folks will sign up for NFL Sunday Ticket on a standalone basis only to realize come football season that it doesn’t entitle them to complete NFL coverage
Conversely, YouTube TV’s version of NFL Sunday Ticket requires an active YouTube TV subscription to access. If you sign up this way, and then decide to try a different live TV service—or cancel your TV bundle entirely—you’ll lose access to the NFL Sunday Ticket subscription you already paid for. According to YouTube’s support documentation, the only way to regain access is to re-subscribe to YouTube TV.
YouTube TV is a cable replacement service with features like a grid guide and DVR.
Jared Newman / Foundry
Hence the need for foresight when choosing one of these plans. Bundling NFL Sunday Ticket with YouTube TV makes sense for those who are committed to the latter for at least the next nine months. If you want flexibility, it’ll cost you an extra $100.
Do you need Sunday Ticket to watch NFL RedZone?
No. RedZone is also available on a standalone basis via NFL+ Premium ($15 per month) or as an add-on with most other live TV streaming services. And if you already get RedZone as part of a cable or satellite package, you can watch through the NFL app at no extra charge.
If you’re put off by the high price of Sunday Ticket, RedZone may be an adequate substitute, with its whiparound coverage showing highlights from around the league. See this article for additional RedZone details.
Are there any Sunday Ticket deals?
YouTube is no longer offering any pre-order discounts for NFL Sunday Ticket, but there are still some ways to save:
- YouTube TV is currently on sale at $53 per month for the first four months, or $146.49 per month for four months with NFL Sunday Ticket. That saves $20 per month or $21.25 per month, respectively, but the deal is only for new subscribers.
- Military and vets can get Sunday Ticket for $199 with ID.me verification.
- For everyone else, YouTube is offering four free months of Max with Sunday Ticket.
Verizon is also offering a slew of Sunday Ticket discounts:
- New Verizon home internet customers can get a free year of Sunday Ticket with 1Gbps or higher Fios, 5G Home Plus, or LTE Home Plus plans.
- New Verizon mobile customers (or existing customers adding a new line) get a free year of Sunday Ticket on Unlimited Plus or Unlimited Ultimate plans when purchasing a select phone.
- Existing Verizon mobile customers get a free year of Sunday Ticket by upgrading to a new phone (with a three-year contract) on Unlimited Plus or Unlimited Ultimate.
- Other Verizon customers get $100 off Sunday Ticket through Verizon’s +play marketplace.
Be mindful of those mobile deals in particular, as they require Verizon’s most expensive plans along with a multi-year service commitment. Depending on what you’re paying for cellular service now, you might not end up saving much money, if any.
Why is NFL Sunday Ticket so expensive now?
While YouTube’s Sunday Ticket price is a lot higher than the $294 that DirecTV charged, its reported $2-billion-per-year price tag for the rights is also $500 million more than what DirecTV paid in its final years. All this comes as the tech and streaming industries focus more on profits than growth, so the largesse you might’ve expected from a company like Google is no longer on display here.
Whether it’ll pay off for Google is another matter. With NFL Sunday Ticket, Google is betting it can use bundle discounts to prop up its pay TV package. Even so, the trend in cord-cutting is away from these big bundles and toward cheaper streaming options.
NFL Sunday Ticket was a boon for DirecTV in the satellite service’s early days, but it eventually became an albatross, costing corporate parent AT&T $800 million per year by one estimate. YouTube has indicated it will experiment more with pricing and packaging down the road, perhaps to avoid a similar fate. For now, its motivations look a lot like those of the TV provider it’s replacing.
Editors’ note: This story was updated September 3, 2024 with details on the 2024 NFL season.
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Author: Jared Newman, Contributor
Jared has been a freelance technology journalist for more than 15 years and is a regular contributor to PCWorld, Fast Company, and TechHive, where he's written a weekly cord-cutting column since 2014. His Cord Cutter Weekly newsletter has more than 30,000 subscribers, and his Advisorator tech advice newsletter is read by nearly 10,000 people each week. Jared has a master's degree in journalism from NYU and specializes in making complex tech topics easy to understand, from streaming and cord-cutting to neat apps and useful tech tricks. He is based in Cincinnati, OH.