AJ Dillon #28 of the Green Bay Packers avoids a tackle by Jalen Ramsey #5 of the Los Angeles Rams during the first half at Lambeau Field on December 19, 2022 in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
Patrick Mcdermott | Getty Images
The National Football League announced Thursday its Sunday Ticket subscription package would go to Google’s YouTube TV starting next season, marking the league’s second media rights deal with a streaming service.
YouTube TV will pay roughly $2 billion a year for the rights of the Sunday Ticket package, according to people familiar with the matter.
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At the start of the 2023-24 season, Sunday Ticket will be available two ways: as an add-on package on YouTube TV and as a standalone a-la-carte option on YouTube Primetime Channels, which allows you to subscribe to individual streaming services and channels as well as watch movies. Pricing has yet to be announced.
DirecTV has had the rights to Sunday Ticket since 1994, paying $1.5 billion annually for them since the last renewal in 2014. It didn’t place a bid to keep its contract going. Still, the satellite-TV provider had been open to still offering the games for commercial establishments, such as bars and restaurants, similar to its agreement with Amazon for “Thursday Night Football,” according to people familiar with the matter.
A U.S.-only product, Sunday Ticket is the only way fans can watch live NFL Sunday afternoon games outside of their local markets on broadcast stations CBS and Fox.
It’s the last NFL package to land a media rights renewal. Last year, Paramount‘s CBS, Fox and Comcast‘s NBC agreed to pay more than $2 billion annually for 11-year packages, while Disney is paying about $2.7 billion per year for Monday Night Football, CNBC previously reported.
Amazon secured the rights to “Thursday Night Football,” making it the first streaming-only platform to air NFL games, paying about $1 billion per year.
The league had been in negotiations for some time to find a new owner for Sunday Ticket. Apple, Amazon, and Disney’s ESPN were among interested bidders for the package at one point or another, CNBC previously reported.
YouTube TV is an internet bundle of broadcast and cable networks that mirrors a traditional linear pay-TV operator. Its base plan costs $64.99 a month. In July, Google announced YouTube TV surpassed 5 million customers, including trial subscriptions.
In recent months, YouTube TV emerged as a strong contender for the rights, given it could provide a lot of what the league was hoping to achieve with a new Sunday Ticket partner – a technology platform with a large balance sheet and global reach, and the ability to support bundled legacy TV.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has said the league was pushing for Sunday Ticket to end up on a streaming service. “I think that’s best for consumers at this stage,” Goodell previously told CNBC.
For a time, it seemed Apple was close to attaining the rights. The company has been expanding its sports footprint for its Apple TV+ streaming service. It recently inked a 10-year deal with Major League Soccer that begins in 2023, and last year began airing Friday night Major League Baseball games.
However, discussions broke down due to existing restrictions around the Sunday Ticket rights, and Apple had wanted more flexibility with how to distribute the package, CNBC previously reported.
Amazon had also been considered another top contender, considering it already airs “Thursday Night Football” games and is a streaming-only platform.
While those contests primarily air on Prime, DirecTV distributes the games commercially, in bars, restaurants, hotels and retailers. The two reached a multi-year deal before the season started. DirecTV is interested in delivering Sunday Ticket games in a similar capacity, people familiar with the matter have said.
Broadcom is scheduled to report earnings for its fiscal third quarter after the close of regular trading on Thursday.
Here’s what analysts are expecting, according to a consensus from LSEG.
Earnings per share: $1.65
Revenue: $15.83 billion
Broadcom, which develops custom chips for Google and other huge cloud companies and also makes networking gear needed to tie thousands of artificial intelligence chips together, is expected to report revenue growth of 21% from $13.07 billion a year ago.
Analysts project revenue growth will hold steady the rest of this year and accelerate a bit in 2026.
Broadcom has been one of the chief beneficiaries of the AI boom thanks largely to its accelerator chips, which the company calls XPUs. The processors are generally simpler and less expensive to operate than Nvidia’s graphics processing units, or GPUs, and they’re designed to run specific AI programs efficiently.
Analysts at Cantor Fitzgerald wrote in a report last week that they expect to see increased signs of demand from Google and Meta.
“Additionally, all eyes will turn towards any visibility of current AI Custom Silicon engagements converting into customers with high-volume ramps in sight,” wrote the analysts, who recommend buying the stock.
The analysts estimate that custom silicon could generate $25 billion to $30 billion in revenue for Broadcom next year and more than $40 billion by around 2027. The company generated total revenue of $51.6 billion in the latest fiscal year.
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Shares of Broadcom are up 30% this year and have almost doubled in the past 12 months, lifting the company’s market cap to $1.4 trillion.
In the fiscal second quarter, AI revenue jumped 46% from a year earlier to more than $4.4 billion, with 40% from networking. CEO Hock Tan said that number should reach $5.1 billion in the third quarter, “as our hyperscale partners continue to invest.”
Some of Broadcom’s expansion has been fueled by acquisitions, most notably the purchase of server virtualization software vendor VMware for $61 billion in 2023. VMware is key to Broadcom’s infrastructure software business, which accounted for 44% of sales in the most recent quarter.
Following a disappointing revenue forecast in its quarterly earnings report late Wednesday, Salesforce’s stock slumped 8%, bringing its decline for 2025 to 28%. That’s the worst performance in large-cap tech.
Revenue increased 10% in the fiscal second quarter from a year earlier, cracking double-digit growth for the first time since early 2024. Sales of $10.24 billion topped the average analyst estimate of $10.14 billion, and earnings per share also exceeded expectations.
However, for the fiscal third quarter, Salesforce said revenue will be $10.24 billion to $10.29 billion, while analysts were expecting $10.29 billion, according to LSEG.
Salesforce regularly touts its investments in artificial intelligence and the advancements in its software as a service, or SaaS, but the company hasn’t been lifted by the AI boom in the same way as many of its tech peers — particularly those focused on infrastructure.
There’s also a concern on Wall Street that AI is going to eat away at much of the software sector.
“While the investor community oozes angst over the future of SaaS, the here and now from Salesforce, while impressive at scale, is not enough to reshape the narrative,” wrote analysts at KeyBanc Capital Markets, in a report on Wednesday. The analysts have a buy rating on the stock.
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Salesforce is dealing with challenges selling marketing and commerce products, Robin Washington, the company’s president and chief operating and financial officer, said on a conference call with analysts.
In its earnings release, Salesforce said it closed over 12,500 total deals for Agentforce, which can automate the handling of customer service questions. That includes 6,000 paid deals. The company said that over 40% of bookings for Agentforce and its data cloud came from existing customers.
CEO Marc Benioff maintained his optimistic tone, downplaying concerns about the AI threat to software and telling analysts on the earnings call that “we are seeing one of the greatest transformations” in the space.
“To hear some of this nonsense that’s out there in social media or in other places, and people say the craziest things, but it’s not grounded in any customer truth,” Benioff said.
Salesforce kept its full-year revenue outlook but now sees higher earnings. The company is targeting $11.33 to $11.37 in adjusted earnings per share on $41.1 billion to $41.3 billion in revenue.
Figma shares plummeted nearly 20% on Thursday, falling to the lowest price since the design software vendor’s IPO in July after the company reported earnings for the first time as a public company.
Results for the second quarter were largely inline with expectations, as Figma had issued preliminary results a little over a month ago. Revenue increased 41% from a year earlier to $249.6 million, slightly topping analyst estimates of $248.8 million, according to LSEG.
Analysts at Piper Sandler described the report as “largely a non-event,” but noted that the “shares have witnessed hyper-volatility” following their 250% surge in the trading debut.
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Since closing at $115.50 on its first day, the stock has lost more than half its value, lowering the company’s market cap to about $27 billion.
For the third quarter, Figma forecasted revenue of between $263 million and $265 million, which would represent about 33% growth at the middle of the range. The LSEG consensus was $256.8 million.
Figma’s IPO was significant for Silicon Valley and the tech sector broadly as it represented one of the highest-profile offerings in years and signaled Wall Street’s growing appetite for growth. The market had been in a multiyear lull that began in early 2022, when inflation was soaring and interest rates were on the rise.
Figma reported a 129% net retention rate, a reflection of expansion with existing customers. The figure was down from 132% in the first quarter.