By Helen Coster
(Reuters) – Google-owned YouTube has signed a multi-year deal to exclusively stream the National Football League’s Sunday Ticket package of games in the United States, the video service said, as more content moves to streaming from traditional TV.
YouTube will pay an average price of about $2 billion a year to secure rights to the NFL Sunday Ticket franchise, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Google and NFL did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.
Starting next season, NFL Sunday Ticket will be available as an add-on package on YouTube TV and standalone a-la-carte on YouTube Primetime Channels, the company said on Thursday.
DirecTV, the largest satellite provider in the United States and which is 70% owned by AT&T Inc, had the rights to Sunday Ticket until the end of the 2022 season.
(Reporting by Helen Coster in New York and Yuvraj Malik in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta and Devika Syamnath)
