YouTube
Jon Cruz (director, global head of sports partnerships)
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From YouTube’s perspective, the platform’s next step with the NFL just made sense.
After all, “we already have one of the largest NFL fan bases anywhere,” said Jon Cruz, YouTube’s director, global head of sports partnerships.
Last December, Google outbid Amazon and ESPN for rights to NFL Sunday Ticket. The subscription package, which lets viewers watch out-of-market, regular-season NFL games, is now available on Google’s YouTube TV. YouTube CEO Neal Mohan and CBO Mary Ellen led negotiations with the NFL and oversee the partnership at the highest level. DirecTV had previously carried NFL Sunday Ticket since 1994.
The partnership between the NFL and YouTube goes back to 2015, and YouTube in the time since has built an expansive library of clips and highlights. The NFL, meanwhile, operates 10 of its own channels on YouTube. And Cruz said live NFL games had been extremely popular on YouTube TV.
“A lot of people, as they’ve talked about Sunday Ticket, have assumed that Sunday Ticket is the foundation upon which we’ll build everything else. And in my mind, it’s actually the inverse,” Cruz said. “All the work we’ve been doing with the league and their official broadcast partners on YouTube TV over the years really laid the foundation for us to bring this premium product to our platform and to fans, and essentially to allow [us] to have the most comprehensive offering of both live and NFL video-on-demand content in the U.S.”
NFL Sunday Ticket costs $349 annually, and NFL Sunday Ticket + NFL RedZone Channel is $389. Cruz said the ultimate measure of the package’s success will be the number of subscribers it generates, but it will also be vital in helping to grow what he called “our connected TV or living room business.”
“If we do a good job and we’re able to successfully migrate this product over,” Cruz said, “Sunday Ticket could serve as a case study for rights holders domestically and also internationally as they think about how they’re going to distribute their rights in a sports media world that’s literally changing under our feet daily.” — Erik Bacharach
