DirecTV held the rights to Sunday Ticket for nearly 30 years. For 2023, the rights shifted to YouTube and YouTube TV.
So how’s it going? Rob Golum of Bloomberg News reports that the service has had “an estimated 1.3 million signups.”
That exceeds by 100,000 the 1.2 million who had Sunday Ticket under DirecTV.
Per the report, YouTube TV has attracted new subscribers as a result of the Sunday Ticket package. And that was clearly part of the motivation for doing it. Based on the money Google paid for the Sunday Ticket page, 4.5 million subscribers would be needed just to break even.
For consumers, the new product has been well received — based in large part on the absence of technical flaws or other issues that undermine the performance of Sunday Ticket on game day, and that result in widespread complaints on social media and elsewhere.