Great news for NFL Sunday Ticket subscribers. DIRECTV announced yesterday that all NFL Sunday Ticket subscribers will have access to live streaming on their mobile devices. Previously you needed the MAX package for that, but for the coming season even base subscribers will get the ability to watch live games anywhere using almost any mobile device. You can read the full press release here.
This is great news for football fans of course, and it also shows DIRECTV’s commitment to mobile and streaming, something they’ve said over and over again. The world is changing and people don’t always have the ability to sit down and watch a program in the living room. In fact, they don’t want to. People today want their programming everywhere, on their schedule, and DIRECTV is making it happen.
The NFL Sunday Ticket package, exclusive to DIRECTV, is the strongest part of their programming portfolio and it makes sense to continue to evolve it. Although it hasn’t been discussed publicly yet, most folks expect there to be 4K programming in the package this year, although it’s not clear which games and who would be able to see it. It’s also fair to expect other changes to the MAX package to continue to sustain its value since streaming is now available on the lower package. At this time, MAX gets you the Red Zone Channel and the Fantasy Football channel. It should be interesting to see what else is added.
Live sports programming is absolutely the most important part of the pay-TV experience for many viewers, and the exclusive NFL Sunday Ticket package has driven DIRECTV’s growth since the early days. In fact, when the AT&T/DIRECTV deal was first announced, it became public knowledge that if DIRECTV lost the exclusive Sunday Ticket program, the deal was off. Of course they didn’t, and the deal went on.
In the future, you can count on continued innovation from DIRECTV as they look toward a world where people stream as much as they watch satellite, and where they don’t care one bit where they sit when they do it. This world is right around the corner and only one company really has the tools to dominate it. That company took a big step by offering streaming of live NFL games to millions of mobile devices. Who knows what they’ll come up with next?
