Apple is still waiting on a reply about its bid for the National Football League’s “Sunday Ticket” package. Apple – along with Disney and Amazon – submitted a bid “weeks ago,” say CNBC‘s Alex Sherman and Jessica Golden.
“The NFL continues to be in discussion with all three bidders as it decides which partner it will choose,” the report claims. The NFL is said to be looking for more than $2 billion for the Sunday Ticket streaming rights and a stake in NFL Media, which oversees the NFL Network channel, NFL.com, and more.
An earlier report claimed that a deal between Apple and the NFL was “done” and “being kept quiet at Apple’s request.”
NFL Sunday Ticket allows out-of-market fans will be able to view non-prime-time games from all 32 NFL teams on Apple TV+.
Sunday Ticket streaming rights are currently held by DirecTV, but that deal is up for grabs after the end of the 2022 season, and Apple could score the rights to stream all non-prime-time Sunday NFL games, allowing out-of-market fans to view the games on Apple TV+.
DirecTV currently pays somewhere around $1.5 billion to broadcast the Sunday Ticket games. The NFL, of course, is looking to score a larger amount for any new deal, with many observers expecting to see the rights going for as much as $2.5 billion.
If Apple does score the rights to Sunday Ticket, it will join Apple TV+’s Friday Night Baseball, which shows a doubleheader of Major League Baseball games each Friday evening, as well as Major League Soccer games, which will begin streaming Apple TV+ beginning in 2023.