This season, NFL Sunday Ticket has ditched DirecTV for YouTube TV. And now, YouTube TV has announced what you can expect from Sunday Ticket this year.
In a blog post, YouTube announced five new features coming to NFL Sunday Ticket, a few of which it borrowed from existing YouTube TV and YouTube features. This includes catching up through key plays and expanded multiview. It also unveiled a new pricing plan for those not looking to shell out an additional $299+ to get access to every NFL live stream this season.
Let’s take a look at everything YouTube announced for NFL Sunday Ticket.
Note: NFL Sunday Ticket will only show you out-of-market games, not games featuring local teams
NFL Sunday Ticket: Monthly payment plans
Starting today, you’ll now have the option to pay for NFL Sunday Ticket over four monthly installments. Well… most of you. If you’re like me and live in Georgia, you’re stuck paying for the entire $299-$439 all at once. Same for those living in Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Nevada and Tennessee.
For the rest of you, you’ll be able to split your payment. The example YouTube provides is for those paying for NFL Sunday Ticket through YouTube Primetime Channels (this is the option for those without an existing YouTube TV subscription), which costs $399. Under the payment plan, you’d pay $99.75 when you sign up, and then $99.75 a month over the next three months.
This will also work for those who sign up through YouTube TV and those who add NFL RedZone to their NFL Sunday Ticket subscription. I’ve broken down the pricing and monthly payments below.
Expanded multiview coming to Sunday Ticket
Multiview has been around for a while, allowing YouTube TV subscribers to view curated channels that show multiple sports games or TV channels at once. Now, if you’ve subscribed to NFL Sunday Ticket, you’ll get access to multiview for local and out-of-market games on both YouTube TV and YouTube.
Each multiview channel will show anywhere from two to four games. The only downside is that you can’t choose which games are in a multiview — only YouTube can.
And if you’re also subscribed to NFL RedZone, multiview will also include RedZone in multiview offerings. That’s a huge win for NFL fans, many of whom prefer to watch games on RedZone, which covers all the big plays on Sundays from all the games.
NFL Sunday Ticket has entered the chat
Multiview may be an existing feature for YouTube TV, but this next one is brand-new. During NFL games this season, fans with Sunday Ticket will be able to view and interact with a live chat and polls from their TVs and phones. Plus, eventually, other features like NFL Shop support will integrate with Sunday Ticket to bring you a truly engaging experience.
Key plays comes to Sunday Ticket
If you know me, you know that catching up with key plays is a YouTube TV feature I cannot live without. And now, NFL Sunday Ticket subscribers will get access to this feature too. Well, at least if you’re watching on TV — YouTube says Key plays will only be available on TVs for this NFL season.
Catching up with key plays allows you to click on a game and then catch up to the live broadcast with a playlist of all the highlights that have happened so far. Great if your Sunday is like mine and involves running errands in addition to watching the games.
YouTube Shorts brings real-time NFL highlights
Key plays won’t be the only way to watch the biggest plays of a game this year either. Real-time highlights will be available from every NFL game this season on the YouTube Shorts player.
And if you have NFL Sunday Ticket, you can click a red “Live” ring on the NFL channel avatar in the Shorts player to take you right to the game from the YouTube highlights. These highlights will definitely be a great tool to decide what game you want to watch.
Bad news: We still don’t know student pricing
While YouTube touted its announcement as “6 features,” I have some bad news. While it did announce that there will be student plans for eligible students, it neglected to mention what the price would actually be. Expect pricing to finally be announced within the next week or so.
