The National Football League has entered into a joint venture with private equity firm RedBird Capital Partners to stream ”NFL Sunday Ticket“ in bars, restaurants and other public dining and entertainment establishments, starting this upcoming football season.
The JV, called EverPass Media, will become the exclusive commercial distributor of NFL Sunday Ticket and could potentially also distribute other live sporting events down the road.
EverPass will be led by Derek Chang and Alex Kaplan, who notably worked closely with the NFL on Sunday Ticket while employed by incumbent distributor DirecTV.
For its part, DirecTV, which just ended a decades-long partnership with the NFL for the residential Sunday Ticket business, said it's still in play to retain the commercial side of the out-of-market regular-season games package.
“DirecTV delivers market-leading sports content to bars, restaurants and other commercial establishments across the U.S. including exclusive access to MLS Season Pass and MLB Friday Night Baseball, as well as Thursday Night Football, with more games and leagues on the horizon. We are in discussions with RedBird Capital to deliver NFL Sunday Ticket to our 300,000-plus commercial venues as only satellite can provide a consistent and reliable experience in venues and across locations that fans have come to expect," DirecTV said in a statement sent to Next TV Tuesday night.
In December, Google/Alphabet entered into a multiyear agreement to take over the residential Sunday Ticket, paying from $2 billion to $2.5 billion to sell the add-on package through its YouTube TV virtual pay TV service.
According to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the RedBird deal, the commercial Sunday Ticket contract is worth around $200 million a season. And DirecTV, which has carried the package since it debuted in 1994, had hoped to retain the commercial business. ■
