Getty Image / Rich Graessle/Icon Sportswire
The 2024/25 NFL Season just to a lot better for football fans who watch games at bars or other businesses because for the first time ever, commercial businesses will have the ability to legally stream NFL Sunday Ticket.
This game-changing opportunity comes after EverPass Media announced the acquisition of UPshow, which they describe as “a leading on-premise entertainment and performance marketing platform” along with a “a strategic investment in EverPass” from TKO Group Holdings which is the parent company of WWE and UFC. So it’s possible additional opportunities have been unlocked in addition to the NFL Sunday Ticket.
In a press release, EverPass Media announced “businesses will now have the option to stream NFL Sunday Ticket for the first time ever starting with the upcoming 2024 NFL season. EverPass and UPshow are currently partners for Peacock Sports Pass, a sports package offering commercial businesses access to select events from Peacock’s live sports content library, including Big Ten football and basketball, Premier League and the NFL’s first-ever regular-season game in Brazil.”
EverPass CEO Alex Kaplan said “We’re excited that through this acquisition, commercial businesses will now be able to stream NFL Sunday Ticket for the first time ever.” And now come the questions of how much bars and restaurants will have to pay for this…
The food and beverage industry already operates on such razor thin margins it is difficult to imagine that every bar which shows NFL football on Sundays will have enough money to fork over for this opportunity.
NFL Sunday Ticket news has been everywhere the past few weeks due to an ongoing antitrust lawsuit. Mike Florio of PFT estimated that each subscriber may be entitled to between $3,000 to $5,000 from the NFL’s settlement, a number which will almost certainly change in the coming days.
But if the NFL is forced to pay up billions, will they be mitigating those losses through sales to commercial businesses? And will that, in turn, cause less individual households to subscribe? It will be interesting to see what the NFL Sunday Ticket numbers look like in 2-3 years from now once this all shakes out.