Yesterday, DIRECTV and NFL announced that their satellite and internet platforms will have both NFL Network and NFL’s own Red Zone Channel. This press release from the NFL confirms it. In addition, U-Verse subscribers (of which, apparently, there are still some) will now have access to those channels if they have the U200 package. Rounding out the great news, DIRECTV for Internet and DIRECTV Stream customers will also have the option for a Sports Pack for the first time.
Shoutout to the folks at SatelliteGuys who managed to get this news posted before I did.
Why you care
Well, the first reason you’d care is if you owned a bar. It took quite a while for DIRECTV and the NFL to announce that NFL Sunday Ticket would be available for business owners over satellite. When the Sunday Ticket package moved to streaming for residential customers, businesses were left not knowing what was coming next. Hearing that you could keep getting Sunday Ticket from DIRECTV as a business owner felt great, but it wasn’t enough. A lot of bars also rely on the Red Zone channel to keep their patrons in their seats. Now, they can finally relax.
You also care if you’re a DIRECTV for Internet or DIRECTV Stream customer. (DIRECTV’s own confusing naming scheme means that if you have a Gemini for Internet device and no satellite, you subscribe to DIRECTV for Internet. The same exact service is known as DIRECTV Stream if you get it month-to-month on your phone.) Sports has always kept people tethered to satellite and now, the internet products can get the sports channels customers crave. That’s a big win for everyone.
Finally, you care if you love football but don’t want to pay the ransom that YouTube is charging for Sunday Ticket. Google’s prices are quite a bit higher than what DIRECTV used to charge. With NFL Network, the Red Zone Channel, and their local channel’s home team broadcasts, plenty of football fans will have what they want week-to-week. If they want more, the local sports bar is never far away.
What’s left to know?
The only part of the former Sunday Ticket Max package that still isn’t accounted for is the Game Mix channel. This custom channel from DIRECTV gave viewers several games at once. You could listen to one at a time and easily make any game full screen. It’s not known right now if DIRECTV will offer this channel to business subscribers. Certainly it wouldn’t be there for home subscribers since NFL Sunday Ticket is only available on streaming for them.
But, I think that’s a small part of the overall package and chances are that will all be figured out in the month or so before we dive into this year’s football season.
The commitment is there
When DIRECTV opted out of NFL Sunday Ticket for home users, a lot of people thought that the satellite service was a dead man walking. Moves like this show us that nothing could be further from the truth. DIRECTV continues to innovate. They’ve found a great niche in the growing entertainment marketplace. DIRECTV is still the largest traditional pay-TV operation in the world, with sales and profits that make streamers jealous. The company is here to stay, plain and simple.
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