Sports bars and restaurants will not be forced to stream NFL Sunday Ticket this season after all—an unexpected reversal of the league’s media strategy.
A new multiyear deal will see DirecTV continue to distribute the NFL’s out-of-market game package via satellite at commercial establishments.
DirecTV’s previous deal expired after the 2025 NFL season, and EverPass Media—a joint venture between the league and RedBird Capital—became the exclusive commercial platform for Sunday Ticket. The change meant businesses that have long relied on DirecTV’s satellite equipment to show NFL games would have to make the switch to streaming hardware from EverPass. DirecTV says it serves more than 300,000 commercial locations nationwide, which opened up the possibility of potentially widespread streaming issues for some customers this coming NFL season.
The EverPass takeover was also another blow for DirecTV, which lost consumer rights to Sunday Ticket to YouTube TV in 2023. In March, DirecTV,went public with its frustration, saying that EverPass “failed to meaningfully engage with DirecTV following months of proposals at terms consistent with the prior agreement,” in a note to customers posted online, and that the EverPass streaming technology “remains unproven in multi-screen commercial settings.”
