According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, YouTube will pay roughly $2 billion a year to secure the rights to the NFL Sunday Ticket franchise as part of its YouTube TV service. NFL Sunday Ticket is a package that allows users to access and watch all Sunday games from out-of-market teams for games that may not be broadcasted on local channels or affiliates.
NFL Sunday Ticket will be offered as an add-on for YouTube TV, which currently costs $64.99 per month. The exact price of the add-on remains unknown. Neal Mohan, chief product officer at YouTube, speaking of the new deal, said "we'll be able to showcase these NFL games in a way that I think no other platform can."
Apple was originally seen as the top contender for securing the rights to NFL Sunday Ticket, with reports at one point suggesting Apple and the NFL had reached a final agreement. According to a new report this week by The Athletic, the agreement didn't go through due to apparent concerns at Cupertino that it wouldn't be able to incorporate NFL Sunday Ticket into its future AR/VR platforms.
Apple and the NFL also could not agree on whether the company would get the right to distribute Sunday Ticket on as yet non-existent platforms. Apple is heavily investing in virtual reality and augmented reality, nascent platforms in which sports are so far largely not viewed. As a result, Apple wanted what is dubbed known and unknown rights, individuals familiar with the NFL and Apple said. In other words, there is no known virtual reality market for Sunday Ticket, but there might be one day.
While YouTube will offer NFL Sunday Ticket as an add-on for YouTube, Apple reportedly wanted to offer NFL Sunday Ticket to Apple TV+ subscribers at no additional cost.
Monday December 16, 2024 10:06 am PST by Juli Clover
Apple today seeded the first betas of upcoming iOS 18.3 and iPadOS 18.3 updates to developers for testing purposes, with the software coming a week after Apple released iOS 18.2 and iPadOS 18.2.
iOS 18.3 and iPadOS 18.3 can be downloaded from the Settings app on a compatible device by going to General > Software update.
There's no word yet on what's included in iOS 18.3 and iPadOS 18.3, ...
Tuesday December 17, 2024 9:02 am PST by Joe Rossignol
The current Apple TV 4K was released more than two years ago, so the streaming device is becoming due for a hardware upgrade soon. Fortunately, it was recently rumored that a new Apple TV will launch at some point next year.
Below, we recap rumors about the next-generation Apple TV.
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman last week reported that Apple has been working on its own combined Wi-Fi and...
Sunday December 15, 2024 9:47 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple is planning a series of "major design" and "format changes" for iPhones over the next few years, according to The Wall Street Journal's Aaron Tilley and Yang Jie.
The paywalled report published today corroborated the widely-rumored "iPhone 17 Air" with an "ultrathin" design that is thinner than current iPhone models. The report did not mention a specific measurement, but previous...
Tuesday December 17, 2024 6:25 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple on Monday seeded the first tvOS 18.3 beta to developers for testing. The update will likely be released in January. So far, there are only minor changes for the Apple TV, with one new feature and a few code changes discovered.
Below, we outline what is new in tvOS 18.3 so far.
Robot Vacuum Support in Home App
First, tvOS 18.3 will add robot vacuum support to the Home app on the...
Monday December 16, 2024 8:55 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Apple released iOS 18.2 in the second week of December, bringing the second round of Apple Intelligence features to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 models. This update brings several major advancements to Apple's AI integration, including completely new image generation tools and a range of Visual Intelligence-based enhancements. Apple has added a handful of new non-AI related feature controls as...
Sunday December 15, 2024 2:57 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple plans to release a second-generation AirTag next year with "considerably" longer range for item tracking, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
In his Power On newsletter today, Gurman said the new AirTag will use Apple's second-generation Ultra Wideband chip, or equivalent technology. The chip debuted last year in the iPhone 15 and the Apple Watch Ultra 2, and Apple said it offers up...
Ouch! A bit embarrassing for Apple. Having said that, 2 billion for just one sport is a lot of money and I’m sure they’ll look into others.
Think this might get embarrassing for Google’s YouTube TV service when the price gets unveiled. It’s going to be $64.99 per month plus whatever they decide the add on is going to be charged. I think it’s going to make DirectTV look like a bargain bin. Don’t think this is an embarrassing loss for Apple as it’s going to be painful to football fans.
This is gross. NFL Sunday Ticket already costs an absurd amount of money through DirecTV (what, 300+ a season?) and, except in very limited circumstances (college students, mostly), you have to have a DirecTV subscription to subscribe to Sunday Ticket (so 60+ a month, minimum, with a two year contract, plus 300+).
Nothing changes, except for the 2 year contract requirement - maybe, I could see Google requiring a contract for YouTubeTV. It's still an absurd amount of money, with no standalone package.
MLB has a standalone package that's absolutely wonderful and reasonably priced. This just makes me hate the NFL more than I already do.
I wish they would ignore NFL which is primarily in the US, and go for global sports.
NFL has plenty of coverage in the US, but has very little interest outside the US.
They should focus on F1 (which has a 300% higher TV viewership than NFL), or major league football (aka soccer in the US).
They would get a ton more subscribers if they were able to stream those services. Not that I have any interest in football, I would love to see better streaming support for motorsports.
