NFL Sunday Ticket is the latest add-on for YouTube TV. It brings along a compelling catalog of NFL games, but it comes at a very steep price. Should you sign up for the newest YouTube TV plan? We’ll run through the details and compare them with other offerings from Google’s cable replacement.
What is NFL Sunday Ticket?
Cable TV and replacements for that aging structure are expensive. Not only that, but they’re on a trend, getting even more costly as time goes on. YouTube TV itself has just gone through a price hike, bringing the Base Plan price up to $72.99 per month. While not a huge jump, it can add up.
Even at that cost, most television services aren’t able to broadcast every single NFL game during the week. A jumble of broadcasting rights split up between companies is to blame for that, leaving viewers left with only a handful of watchable games throughout the season if they follow a dedicated team.
Enter NFL Sunday Ticket from YouTube TV. With Sunday Ticket, viewers can freely watch out-of-market games that would previously not have been available to them. Of course, this only applies to Sunday games during the regular season, as Monday and Thursday night games are broadcast to most regions in the U.S.
NFL Sunday Ticket is meant to compensate for all of the regular season games you wouldn’t be able to watch based on your location. If you were to sign up for YouTube TV’s Base Plan and add NFL Sunday Ticket, you have a very high chance of catching every single game each week.
With that, YouTube TV is also making multi-view a part of the package, letting users watch up to four games on one screen. This feature was tested during March Madness but has yet to become available for users on the Base Plan.
Is Sunday Ticket worth the high cost?
NFL Sunday Ticket sounds like the solution every single football fan has been waiting for. It will seemingly supersede all other services and allow viewers to watch literally any Sunday game each week. Of course, seemingly perfect solutions have high prices.
NFL Sunday Ticket will start at $349 for YouTube TV members who are already enrolled in the Base Plan. In total, that season cost comes out to $422 for the first month, with the regular $72.99 every other month thereafter. For users who are not already paying for YouTube TV, NFL Sunday Ticket will cost $449 for the year as a Primetime Channel.
Since the NFL season hasn’t started yet, Google is running a presale event that drops these prices down by $100 – $249 for YouTube TV subscribers and $349 for non-members.
With that price in mind, you have to sit down and decide if an entire regular season of no blackouts is worth that price tag. There’s no doubt that the answer is different for everyone.
For those who keep tabs on every team in every conference and run with several fantasy leagues, the cost of being able to watch every single game live along with multi-view might be hard to argue with. Meanwhile, for those that are loyal to one or two teams and only watch those games, it might not be worth it.
NFL Sunday Ticket is undoubtedly aimed at hardcore fans and fantasy football managers. If you use the NFL Fantasy app, you can connect your account to YouTube TV for seamless integration. That, plus the ability to watch four live games at one time is a pretty sweet deal.
During the presale event, the new package is easier to digest. A price of $249 can be somewhat justifiable. At $100 more during the regular season, the cons start to outweigh the pros. Perhaps if the price of the Base Plan was lowered for Sunday Ticket subscribers during the season, coughing up $422 for that first month would be easier.
NFL Sunday Ticket is set to be made available over “the next few days” with no concrete dates. Let us know in the comments if you’re considering the plan for the NFL season.
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