Google’s YouTube is in advanced talks with the National Football League for exclusive rights to NFL Sunday Ticket, The Wall Street Journal reports.
NFL Sunday Ticket is a subscription-only package that gives viewers access to most of the Sunday afternoon games.
An agreement could be reached as early as Wednesday, when the NFL owners are set to meet to discuss rights deals.
The games are currently aired by AT&T’s DirecTV and private equity firm TPG Inc., which pay $1.5 billion a year for the Sunday Ticket rights. WSJ did not disclose the financial terms of the YouTube-NFL deal.
The blockbuster agreement—beating out Amazon and Apple, which also explored streaming Sunday Ticket—would be another major triumph for streaming services, as major sports franchises continue to migrate from traditional TV to Big Tech streaming.
Amazon.com has an NFL deal of its own. Apple Inc. airs some Major League Baseball games and has just struck a deal for Major League Soccer.
Traditional media companies, meanwhile, are struggling to keep up with the expensive deals that streaming services are offering professional sports organizations.
ESPN, for instance, dropped out of Sunday Ticket negotiations due to the steep price tag the NFL was asking, according to sources familiar with the deal.
Warner Brothers Discovery Inc. CEO David Zaslav told the National Basketball Association he is not willing to overspend to keep the NBA on Warner’s TNT network.
“We don’t have to have the NBA,” Zaslav told investors last month.
Google would air the games on YouTube TV and YouTube Primetime Channels, beginning next season. The former currently charges $64.99 a month for a bundle of cable channels. YouTube TV had more than 5 million subscription accounts in June, according to the company.
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