When Google’s YouTube snapped up the out-of-market NFL Sunday Ticket package late last year for a cool $14 billion (or $2 billion per year), it left just one last loose end for the league to tie up on the media-rights front. Still up for grabs were the Sunday Ticket commercial rights, which the NFL looked to license to bars and restaurants for another $200 million per season.
Rather than dealing in another outside vendor, however, the NFL has elected to keep those commercial rights in-house. In a move that was announced Tuesday at the annual owners meetings in Phoenix, the league has launched EverPass Media, a new venture with RedBird Capital Partners that will be charged with distributing Sunday Ticket to out-of-home venues across the country.
In a sense, managing the Sunday Ticket rights is merely a jumping-off point for EverPass, which aims to broker similar licensing deals—and on a global scale—with other leagues. Among the opportunities that are being mulled over by EverPass executive chairman Derek Chang and CEO Alex Kaplan is a commercial-distribution deal with the English Premier League.
“Our goal is to create a new model for commercial sports rights distribution around the globe, and we believe that this is just the beginning of an exciting journey,” Chang said in a press release announcing the news. Chang serves as a Liberty Media director and is the former CEO of NBA China, while Kaplan is a one-time NBA and Discovery Golf exec who for 10 years oversaw DirecTV’s Sunday Ticket business.
According to NFL chief media and business officer Brian Rolapp, one of the first orders of business for EverPass will be to grow Sunday Ticket’s out-of-home presence beyond DirecTV’s network of 300,000 sports bars, restaurants, casinos and hotel lounges. “Making our games as widely available as possible has been the bedrock of our media strategy,” Rolapp said in the release. “We look forward to working with EverPass Media to expand the Sunday Ticket footprint in commercial establishments across the country.”
While DirecTV’s legacy Sunday Ticket deal has come to an end—the satellite-TV provider had held the exclusive rights to the package since its launch in 1994—the company sublicenses the out-of-home rights to Amazon Prime Video’s Thursday Night Football 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," a DIRECTV spokesperson said in a statement. "We are in discussions with RedBird Capital to deliver NFL Sunday Ticket to our 300,000+ commercial venues as only satellite can provide a consistent and reliable experience in-venues and across locations that fans have come to expect.”
The formation of EverPass marks the third tie-up between the NFL and Gerry Cardinale’s RedBird. In November 2022, the league launched Skydance Sports, a joint production venture with David Ellison’s Skydance Media, with which RedBird is a primary investor. Air, the first major motion picture to be released under the Skydance Sports banner, opens April 5.
The two entities first joined forces back in 2015 when live-event hospitality unit On Location Experiences was spun off by the NFL. After an initial investment of some $70 million, RedBird, Bruin Sports Capital and the Carlyle Group sold their shares to Endeavor in 2020 for $660 million. Ties between RedBird and the NFL have grown since. In 2021, RedBird hired Kevin LaForce, then the NFL’s senior vice president of media strategy and business development. LaForce oversaw 32 Equity, the NFL’s venture capital arm, which hold its shares of both the Skydance JV, and this new partnership for Sunday Ticket’s commercial rights.
“We are excited to partner again with the NFL to develop an innovative platform to expand the league’s reach to its fan base and the sports media ecosystem more broadly,” Cardinale said of EverPass. “Anchored by Sunday Ticket, EverPass Media will provide premium rights holders a scalable live event entertainment service that will enhance the customer experience at commercial establishments across the country.”
While the NFL has not provided guidance on how it plans to price the commercial license, an expansion of the legacy sports-bar footprint should more than cover missing out on a $200 million fee. Under DirecTV, a full-season license for an establishment serving up to 500 patrons was $12,350, while a business with twice the customer traffic could expect to fork over $19,000 for the Sunday afternoon CBS/Fox games. Multi-level mega bars maxed out at $78,000 year, while casinos carrying Sunday Ticket games were on the hook for around $100,000.
The NFL can also carve out a nice little bit of business on the ad sales front, thanks to Nielsen’s integration of out-of-home impressions into its standard linear-TV measurement. While all national inventory will remain consistent with the original broadcast feeds, EverPass may look to sell the local ad time back to its distribution partners at the cable, satellite and telco-TV operators.
As is the case with YouTube’s stewardship of the in-home Sunday Ticket service, the EverPass era officially begins when the 2023 NFL season kicks off in September.
—Additional reporting by Eben Novy-Williams
