A satellite dish is no longer the only way bars and restaurants can air the National Football League\u2019s package of \u201cSunday Ticket\u201d games.<\/p>\n
EverPass Media, the joint venture between the league and private equity firm RedBird Capital Partners that\u00a0owns\u00a0the commercial rights to \u201cSunday Ticket,\u201d acquired UPshow, a platform with the tech capabilities to allow commercial establishments to stream live sports. Terms of the deal were undisclosed.<\/p>\n
With this acquisition, bars, restaurants, casinos and other businesses will be able to stream \u201cSunday Ticket\u201d games. Until recently, they could only do so through a subscription to satellite TV provider DirecTV.<\/p>\n
DirecTV will remain as a distributor to bars and restaurants, however. EverPass\u00a0signed\u00a0a nonexclusive deal with DirecTV last year to continue to distribute \u201cSunday Ticket\u201d games, giving it the ability to reach deals with other distribution platforms.<\/p>\n
\u201cMore content is moving to streaming. Regardless of the streaming economics, it\u2019s become pretty clear that live sports is an important piece of that,\u201d said EverPass CEO Alex Kaplan. \u201cWe\u2019re going to think about how to deliver a product and service to our customers that\u2019s becoming increasingly more challenging for them to sort of aggregate in a meaningful way. We\u2019re still in the early days \u2026 but this is a big step for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
The new distribution option will be available this coming NFL season.<\/p>\n
The acquisition for EverPass comes as more live sports games are being offered exclusively on streaming services \u2014 a new frontier for business establishments that have long subscribed to traditional pay TV packages to offer live sports.<\/p>\n
\u201cSunday Ticket\u201d is an integral sports package for bars and restaurants since it provides all out-of-market NFL games.<\/p>\n
In late 2022,\u00a0Google\u2019s YouTube TV\u00a0acquired\u00a0the residential rights to \u201cSunday Ticket\u201d for roughly $2 billion a year, a deal which runs over seven years. DirecTV had been the\u00a0owner\u00a0and exclusive residential and commercial distributor of the games since the package\u2019s inception in 1994.<\/p>\n
This followed a deal for\u00a0Amazon\u2019s Prime Video to become the exclusive\u00a0home\u00a0of \u2018Thursday Night Football\u2019 \u2014 part of the 11-year NFL media rights\u00a0agreement\u00a0worth over $100 billion.<\/p>\n
Since then, the media rights owners of NFL games have begun to offer games simultaneously on their streaming services \u2014 and in some cases exclusively. Earlier this year\u00a0Comcast\u2019s NBCUniversal aired an NFL Wild Card game on Peacock, the first time a postseason game was\u00a0exclusively\u00a0offered via streaming.\u00a0Netflix\u00a0also recently won the\u00a0rights\u00a0to air two NFL games on Christmas this year, and at least one on the holiday in the following two years.<\/p>\n
EverPass also brought on a new investor this week.<\/p>\n
The joint venture announced that\u00a0TKO\u00a0\u2014 the newly merged company that owns UFC and World Wrestling Entertainment \u2014 will enter the ownership group. TKO is majority-owned by\u00a0Endeavor Group Holdings.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow with RedBird, the NFL and TKO behind us, we think we have the means to put even more behind that technology,\u201d said Kaplan.<\/p>\n
EverPass is also looking to become a distributor for other content in addition to \u201cSunday Ticket\u201d and the NFL.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re out there looking at new content, and we certainly think they have great content and expect those will be discussions that we have in the near future,\u201d said Kaplan on whether EverPass will distribute TKO\u2019s WWE or UFC. \u201cIn general, we feel really good about our content pipeline.\u201d<\/p>\n
The company first partnered with UPshow when it started providing Peacock Sports Pass, which is a way for commercial establishments to stream some of the live sports on NBCUniversal\u2019s streaming platform, including the NFL, Premier League and college football.<\/p>\n
Pricing for Peacock Sports Pass, similar to the upcoming distribution of \u201cSunday Ticket,\u201d is dependent upon the commercial establishment\u2019s classification, according to the company\u2019s\u00a0website.<\/p>\n
In addition, the acquisition of UPshow will give EverPass the opportunity to explore distribution globally at a moment when leagues like the NFL, National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball are pushing into international markets.<\/p>\n
\u201cTechnology transcends borders. So all of a sudden we actually have the capability to go international,\u201d said Derek Chang, executive chairman of EverPass. \u201cAnd then the investment of Endeavor\/TKO, which obviously has a tremendous amount of reach globally in terms of relationships.\u201d<\/p>\n
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n A satellite dish is no longer the only way bars and restaurants can air the National Football League\u2019s package of \u201cSunday Ticket\u201d games. EverPass Media, the joint venture between the league and private equity firm RedBird Capital Partners that\u00a0owns\u00a0the commercial rights to \u201cSunday Ticket,\u201d acquired UPshow, a platform with the tech capabilities to allow commercial […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5796,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}