For nearly a year analysts have been falling all over themselves announcing Apple as the new home of the NFL’s Sunday Ticket service, which allows users to see games that are outside of their local market. The reasoning has been essentialy, “Apple has money, Apple Shows one baseball game per week and Apple just got exclusive streaming rights to MLS. Somehow those factors made people think this was a slam dunk. As usual, expectations about a huge Apple announcement were off base.
This is all according to reporting from Puck News by way of Mac Rumors. According to the reporting Apple has pulled out of negotiations with the NFL over the lack of ability to package the service the way it would like to. The NFL is insisting that the carrier of the service abide by the one size fits all model that includes access to all, out-of-market games (that are not also on NFL Network, Amazon, or ESPN. Rumors had said that Apple was looking to try and offer smaller packages than were previously afforded to DirecTV customers. The Streaming Advisor reported that the NFL was in no mood to negotiate on that.
Unsubstantiated rumors had suggested that Apple hoped to fold access to the very expensive NFL package into Apple TV+, in hopes of making up what is sure to be a billion-dollar investment with volume from millions of new signups for their small streaming service.
Amazon and Disney are said to still be in the running for the package.
