NFL fans love NFL Sunday Ticket. The football-only streaming service gives you access to every regular season out-of-market game and once you use it it's a total game-changer. So it's no surprise that this latest Sunday Ticket news has football fans outraged.
First reported by John Ourand of Puck, if you sign up through the YouTube app on an Apple device, NFL Sunday Ticket starts at an eye-watering $679.99 (h/t NBCSports). Adding in NFL RedZone brings the price up even further to an astronomical $739.99. I've checked for myself and can confirm that this pricing is accurate, at least on my iPad.
This is a big deal. NFL Sunday Ticket typically starts at $479 for the 2024-25 NFL season, though if you have YouTube TV, you can get $100 off by signing up through YouTube TV. That means if you're signing up through the YouTube app on Apple, you're spending as much as $300 extra.
There's good news though. You don't need to buy Sunday Ticket through Apple. Just sign up through YouTube Primetime Channels or YouTube TV online through a web browser. If you do that, you'll just pay the regular price and might even score $50 off if YouTube is running a promotion.
You'll still be able to use your Sunday Ticket subscription with no restrictions even if you don't sign up through Apple, so there's no reason to sign up through Apple.
Apple's cut of App Store sales is to blame
The reason why Sunday Ticket is so expensive on Apple devices is because Apple takes a 30% cut of all sales on its App Store. So to compensate, YouTube, which is owned by Google and its parent company Alphabet, simply raised the price on devices like iPhones and iPads.
In fact, YouTube won't even let you sign up via YouTube TV on those devices. It forces you to follow a link to a web browser to manage your YouTube TV subscription outside of the App Store ecosystem because it doesn't want to give Apple a cent of its revenue if it doesn't need to.
Fanduel unveils Sunday Ticket free trial
There's even more good news though. Not only do you not have to sign up for Sunday Ticket through Apple, meaning you can still pay regular price, but you can finally score an NFL Sunday Ticket free trial.
Fanduel is currently running a promotion that will give you three weeks of NFL Sunday Ticket for free. All you need to do is opt-in to the promotion on the betting site's promotions page, place a $5 real money wager and then you'll receive a promotion link via email starting on September 5. You'll have until September 22 to redeem your promotional code for three free weeks.
Of course, this offer is only available to those of legal gambling age in states that allow Fanduel Sportsbook to operate. Specifically, that means those who are at least 18 years of age and physically present in the District of Columbia or are at least 21 years of age and are physically present in Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana (excluding the following parishes: Caldwell, Catahoula, Franklin, Jackson, LaSalle, Sabine, Union, West Carroll and Winn), Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, or Wyoming.
