🚨 The News: Google will pay the NFL between $2.0-2.5BN annually, including a variable component based on sign-ups, under a seven-year for the residential rights to exclusively retail the 🏈 NFL Sunday Ticket through YouTube in the United States. The NFL retains commercial rights to broadcast games in bars, restaurants, and other commercial premises until further notice — which could push the package's annual value beyond $2.5BN in a best-case scenario and the league’s total domestic media rights income to $12.0BN for each of at least the next seven years.

🧵 The Spin: Google's (and Facebook’s) online advertising duopoly is going away thanks to TikTok, Amazon, and streaming video (💡 think: advertising budgets moving from the duopolized 📱 🖥 small-and-medium-sized devices to the more fragmented 📺 big-screen device and audience landscape). Other “mega-cap” technology giants have ventured into high-profile live sports programming to amplify their ecosystem — Google might do so to retain instead of expanding its business, from a position of 🛡 weakness instead of 👊🏼 strength as the digital media landscape continues to evolve.

🥸 The Analysis: To create a return on this loss-leading investment, Google will need to build a multi-dimensional value creation and capture process for its ecosystem across several B2C ( 👥 consumers) and B2B ( 🏢 advertisers) touch points, with direct ( 💳 consumer’s disposable income) and indirect ( 💰 advertising budgets) monetization, as well as immediate (🎟️ re-selling NFL Sunday Ticket to consumers and advertisers) and downstream ( 📺 participation in future on-platform consumer and advertiser transactions) returns.

Key success metrics will be derivatives from actual NFL Sunday Ticket sales: 📺 YouTube TV accounts/subscriptions, consumer adoption of 🛒 Primetime Channels as preferred CTV storefront, and market share of ⚙️ Google TV among CTV operating systems and for consumer time spent.

Despite improved content accessibility and expanded addressable market compared to the previous rights holder (satellite TV operator DirecTV), 💳 pure transaction revenues from NFL Ticket Sunday will not come close to breaking even on the two-billion-per-season investment.

🧐 Let’s unpick YouTube’s acquisition of the exclusive retailing rights to 🏈 NFL Sunday Ticket along the following lines:

1️⃣ Product-Market-Fit: How could the NFL Sunday Ticket have served any other potential buyer’s business in the current media marketplace, and what held them back?

2️⃣ Must-Have vs. Nice-to-Have for Big Tech: Amazon, Apple, and Google’s core businesses are challenged to different degrees, can NFL Sunday Ticket mitigate existential threats?

3️⃣ NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube: How does the NFL Sunday Ticket fit into Google’s core advertising business and any other of the company’s developing, but still nascent revenue streams?

4️⃣ Digital TV Bundle, Multi-Tiered Subscriptions, CTV Storefronts, Advertising Budgets: With everyone following a similar playbook, how are Apple, Amazon, and Google going for video and audience aggregation primacy by leveraging live sports programming?

5️⃣ Outlook for YouTube: How does Google create a parallel path for YouTube to own the bundle of the future, regardless of whether the linear TV bundle survives (= YouTube TV as leading virtual MVPD), the new bundle becomes a self-select package of third-party streaming services (= Primetime Channels as CTV storefront), or a combination both?

That's it, I appreciate any feedback or a follow on Twitter (@YannickRamcke), where I share my thoughts regarding current developments in everything "Sports Business, Media & More" on a somewhat regular basis.