NFL Sunday Ticket still up for grabs as Apple pushes for flexibility with game rights
Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes (15) is sacked by Los Angeles Chargers linebacker Drue Tranquill (49) in the first quarter at Arrowhead Stadium on Thursday, Sept. 15, 2022, in Kansas City, Missouri.
Tammy Ljungblad | Tribune News Service | Getty Images
The National Football League season is heading into Week 6, and it’s still unclear which company will become the new owner of Sunday Ticket rights — the only remaining exclusive broadcast package that hasn’t been renewed until 2030.
Apple has been among the favorites to land the package, in part because the league already has broadcast deals in place with rival bidders, including Disney and Amazon. A partnership with Apple would allow the NFL to build a relationship with the deepest-pocketed company in the world.
But existing restrictions around Sunday Ticket have slowed negotiations between Apple and the NFL in recent months, according to people familiar with the matter. Talks between the league and potential buyers of Sunday Ticket are continuing, the people said.
Spokespeople for Apple and the NFL declined to comment.
The NFL and Apple, two of the most powerful corporate entities in the world, are used to getting what they want.
Apple isn’t interested in simply acting as a conduit for broadcasting games, according to Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of services. Cue oversees Apple’s media and sports partnerships and its streaming service, Apple TV+. Apple is looking for partnerships with sports leagues in which it can offer consumers more than standard rights agreements — such as having free rein to offer games globally or in local markets. Apple has that type of deal with Major League Soccer, a 10-year partnership that begins in 2023.
“We weren’t interested in buying sports rights,” Cue said this week at a Paley Center for Media panel in New York. “There’s all kinds of capabilities that we’re going to be able to do together because we have everything together. And so if I have a great idea, I don’t have to think about, OK, well, my contract or the deal of interest will allow this.”
The iPhone maker is MLS’s exclusive broadcast partner, though some linear networks may buy simulcast rights to the soccer league’s games. The pact allows Apple to stream every game of every season for the next 10 years globally. It plans to build MLS steaming capabilities into its apps, such as Apple News.
While a “great idea” by Cue could potentially manifest into a practical solution quickly with MLS, the same may not be feasible with the NFL, which has been in business with Fox, Paramount Global, Comcast‘s NBCUniversal and Disney for decades. The league also sold its “Thursday Night Football” package to Amazon.
The NFL last year renewed broadcast TV agreements with both Fox and CBS until 2030. Those deals guarantee exclusivity of local games. Fox and CBS have devised entire corporate strategies around that exclusivity, including buying local TV stations that line up with NFL markets where they own rights. For example, Fox owns local stations in locations including Atlanta, Chicago, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. — all places with NFC teams, because Fox owns the NFC Sunday package.
Sunday Ticket is also a U.S.-only product. It remains unclear what the NFL is willing to give Apple to enhance a deal beyond what it’s sold to DirecTV for the past 28 years. Still, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell told CNBC in July part of the benefit of selling to a streamer is to “innovate beyond where we are today.”
Goodell said he plans to choose a new Sunday Ticket home by fall of this year. On that timeline, a winning bidder should be announced in the next 10 weeks. The NFL wants a buyer for Sunday Ticket to pay between $2 billion and $3 billion annually, CNBC has previously reported. That’s a significant increase from the $1.5 billion DirecTV has been paying since 2015. The league is also looking for a company to purchase a minority stake in NFL Media, which includes linear cable networks RedZone and NFL Network, as well as NFL.com. The NFL has been packing the minority stake with Sunday Ticket, though it could decide to sell each separately, Goodell said.
Beyond its MLS partnership, Apple has been laying breadcrumbs that it wants to take a significant plunge into live sports. Apple struck a deal with Major League Baseball to carry exclusive Friday night games this season. And last month, the NFL announced Apple Music as the new partner for the Super Bowl halftime show.
The longer the NFL waits to reach a deal, the less time a new owner of the rights will have to market the product for next season. DirecTV executives have been waiting for nearly two years for a new partner to be announced and have been surprised with how long it’s taken to find one, according to people familiar with the matter. DirecTV has routinely lost money on Sunday Ticket and isn’t participating in this round of bidding, CNBC reported in June.
The satellite provider would be interested in maintaining its commercial agreement to carry games in bars and restaurants or act as a pass-through for the Sunday Ticket winner, where existing DirecTV customers could continue to get the package through its pay-TV service, CNBC reported in June.
Disclosure: Comcast’s NBCUniversal is the parent company of CNBC.
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The Intel headquarters in Santa Clara, California, US, on Wednesday, April 23, 2025. Intel Corp. is scheduled to release earnings figures on April 24.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Intel CFO David Zinsner said President Donald Trump’s tariffs and retaliation from other countries has increased the likelihood of a recession.
“The very fluid trade policies in the U.S. and beyond, as well as regulatory risks, have increased the chance of an economic slowdown, with the probability of a recession growing,” Zinsner said on the company’s quarterly earnings call on Thursday.
Intel reported better-than-expected first-quarter results, partially because some customers stockpiled chips ahead of tariffs, the company said. However, guidance for revenue and profit was below expectations, pushing the chipmaker’s stock down more than 5% in extended trading.
Intel’s forecast for the current quarter is $11.2 billion to $12.4 billion. Zinsner said the range is “wider than normal” due to uncertainty caused by tariffs.
The company’s outlook underscores how sensitive manufacturers are to trade restrictions, even for companies that are committed to building products in the U.S. While Intel manufactures some of its advanced processors domestically, it also partners with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and Samsung in Korea to manufacture chips, and imports chipmaking machinery from ASML in Europe. The company also needs parts and materials that come from China.
Zinsner said the tariff environment makes it harder for Intel to predict its performance for the quarter and the year, and added that it’s now anticipating that the total market for its chips could shrink, especially if consumers stop buying new computers.
“The biggest risk we see is the impact of a potential pullback in investment and spending, as businesses and consumers react to higher costs and the uncertain economic backdrop,” Zinsner said.
Although Intel has enough production in disparate places around the world to mitigate some of the tariffs, the company “will certainly see costs increase,” he added.
One possibility is that consumers may opt for laptops and other computers based around older-generation chips, which are less expensive, said Michelle Johnston Holthaus, CEO of Intel Products.
“The macroeconomic concerns and tariffs have everybody kind of hedging their bets in what they need to have from an inventory perspective,” Holthaus said on the earnings call.
Beyond tariffs, Intel faces efforts by the U.S. government to require licenses to ship advanced chips for artificial intelligence to countries like China.
Intel’s earnings report on Thursday was its first under CEO Lip-Bu Tan, who was appointed to the job last month. Tan said he planned to cut Intel’s operational and capital expenses in order to make the company more efficient.
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A Waymo rider-only robotaxi is seen during a test ride in San Francisco, California, U.S., December 9, 2022.
Paresh Dave | Reuters
Alphabet reported Thursday that Waymo, its autonomous vehicle unit, is now delivering more than 250,000 paid robotaxi rides per week in the U.S.
CEO Sundar Pichai said Waymo has options in terms of “business models across geographies,” and the robotaxi company is building partnerships with ride-hailing app Uber, automakers and operations and maintenance businesses that tend to its vehicle fleets.
“We can’t possibly do it all ourselves,” said Pichai on a call with analysts for Alphabet’s first-quarter earnings.
Pichai noted that Waymo has not entirely defined its long-term business model, and there is “future optionality around personal ownership” of vehicles equipped with Waymo’s self-driving technology. The company is also exploring the ways it can scale up its operations, he said.
The 250,000 paid rides per week are up from 200,000 in February, before Waymo opened in Austin and expanded in the San Francisco Bay Area in March.
Waymo, which is part of Alphabet’s Other Bets segment, is already running its commercial, driverless ride-hailing services in the San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Austin regions.
Earlier this month, Waymo and its partner Uber, began allowing interested riders to sign up to try the robotaxi service in Atlanta when it opens this summer.
The early pioneer in self-driving technology, Waymo has managed to beat Elon Musk-led Tesla and a myriad of now-defunct autonomous vehicle startups to the U.S. market.
Tesla is promising that it will be able to turn its Model Y SUVs into robotaxis by the end of June for a driverless ride-hailing service it plans to launch in Austin.
After about a decade of promises and missed deadlines, Tesla still does not offer a vehicle that’s safe to use without a human at the wheel ready to steer or brake at all times.
Musk criticized Waymo’s approach to driverless tech on his company’s first-quarter earnings call on Tuesday. Musk said Waymo autonomous vehicles are “very expensive” and made in only “low volume.” Tesla’s partially automated driving systems rely mostly on cameras to navigate, while Waymo’s driverless systems rely on lidar technology, other sensors and cameras.
Would-be competitors to Waymo also include Amazon-owned Zoox, Mobileye, May Mobility and international autonomous vehicle companies such as WeRide and Baidu’s Apollo Go.
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