The NFL is "on the verge of a deal with DirecTV for its Sunday Ticket package that will see its average annual rights fee increase" to $1.3-1.4B over the next decade, according to Kaplan & Ourand in this week's SPORTSBUSINESS JOURNAL. DirecTV’s rights fee will "increase by a mid-single-digit percentage each year in a deal that will sync up with the NFL’s other TV deals, which run into the next decade." ESPN’s deal runs through the '21 regular season while the CBS, Fox and NBC deals go into '22. It is "not clear exactly when DirecTV’s new Sunday Ticket deal would end," but sources said that it would be either '21 or '22. The NFL and DirecTV still need to "iron out some issues, particularly as it pertains to digital rights," but sources said that those issues are "not big enough to derail the deal." DirecTV’s current four-year deal for Sunday Ticket "ends after this season and carries an average annual value" of $1B. The new deal is expected to "grant DirecTV over-the-top rights for people who cannot install a DirecTV satellite dish -- a feature the satellite company already plans to roll out for this season." Over the past year, DirecTV and the NFL have "negotiated everything from NFL Network carriage to NFL Network analyst Rich Eisen’s new talk show." Eisen’s show "debuts in October and is a partnership between DirecTV and the NFL’s over-the-top service, NFL Now." All of these talks are "interrelated with Sunday Ticket" (
SPORTSBUSINESS JOURNAL, 8/25 issue).
