NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube will have comments, polls, and more

Ben Schoon | Feb 7 2023 - 11:30 am PT

YouTube landed a huge deal at the end of 2022, with NFL Sunday Ticket set to depart DirecTV and instead move to YouTube and YouTube TV. As that debut approaches, Google continues to spill more details, with a recent earnings call confirming a few new features for NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube.

As highlighted by Deadline, Alphabet’s Q4 2022 earnings call last week came with a few interesting quotes from Google’s Phillipp Schindler.

Firstly, this included Schindler confirming that NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube will be a fully à la carte offering. This was implied, but this is the first explicit confirmation of the matter, with Sunday Ticket being mentioned as an add-on for YouTube TV.

It basically means that every YouTube viewer who is interested in the NFL can now have one-click access to the full offering of Sunday Ticket as an add-on package on a YouTube TV subscription, and as a standalone offering on Primetime Channels. This will be the first time Sunday Ticket is actually available a la carte for fans.

Again, this is all as expected, but it’s nice to have the firm confirmation.

More interesting were comments from Schindler regarding features for NFL Sunday Ticket. On connected TVs, Schindler says that NFL Sunday Ticket will be able to use comments, chats, and polls, among other features.

On YouTube TV, we are building the ability for subscribers to, for example, watch multiple screens at once. And on YouTube CTV, we will be adding new features specific to the Sunday Ticket experience, like comments, chats, polls, and so on.

Meanwhile, YouTube TV will allow users to “watch multiple screens” at once. It’s unclear if this is referring to the simple ability to watch on multiple TVs/devices at once or a split-screen function. In a previous interview, it was also mentioned that YouTube TV would add support for split-screen viewing “in time” for NFL Sunday Ticket’s debut.