Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Brandon Smith during the game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Jacksonville Jaguars
Matthew Pearce | Icon Sportswire | Getty Images
Amazon is in talks to acquire the rights for the National Football League’s “Sunday Ticket” package and is seen as the front-runner by others involved in talks with the league, according to people familiar with the matter.
Amazon has a serious interest in the multiyear package of out-of-market games, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private. Amazon in May agreed to pay about $1 billion per year to become the exclusive provider of Thursday Night Football games beginning next year. That deal made Amazon Prime Video the first-ever streaming service to own an exclusive NFL broadcast package.
An Amazon spokesman declined to comment on “Sunday Ticket” discussions.
The NFL is expected to ask for $2 billion to $2.5 billion per year for the package and wants to wrap up discussions before the season ends in February, two of the people said. “Sunday Ticket” has been owned by DirecTV for the past 27 years. Talks are progressing with interested parties, suggesting the league is getting closer to choosing a new provider, said the people.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell told CNBC on Wednesday the out-of-market Sunday game package “maybe will be more attractive on a digital platform” as streaming platforms continue to add subscribers at the expense of traditional pay-television. Goodell also suggested to CNBC that the league is looking for one strategic partner to acquire not only “Sunday Ticket” rights but to also invest in NFL Network, which airs NFL content all year, and NFL RedZone, which shows live footage of game action when teams are close to scoring touchdowns. The NFL currently owns both NFL Network and NFL RedZone.
Amazon has competition for the Sunday game rights. ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro told Bloomberg this week that “Sunday Ticket” is “an incredibly valuable product” and acknowledged that Disney has had exploratory conversations with the league. The Information news site reported that Apple has also expressed interest in the package. NBCUniversal’s Peacock is not expected to bid for the rights, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Several media executives involved in the discussions told CNBC they viewed Amazon as the favorite to win the rights to the package. NBC News reported Amazon and ESPN’s early interest in the package in July.
DirecTV’s tenure
DirecTV is still considering its options but may not have the balance sheet to compete with Amazon or Apple, whose market valuations are close to or above $2 trillion, two of the people said.
DirecTV has paid about $1.5 billion per year for “Sunday Ticket” for the past seven seasons and currently charges about $300 for the package as an add-on. The satellite TV provider also now offers “Sunday Ticket” as a component of its “Choice,” “Ultimate,” and “Premier” pay-TV packages.
DirecTV has lost money on “Sunday Ticket” for many years. At its current $300 price point, DirecTV would need 5 million subscribers to break even. DirecTV has averaged closer to 2 million “Sunday Ticket” subscribers for many years, according to a person familiar with the matter. Executives at DirecTV and its majority owner AT&T have argued that “Sunday Ticket” has become increasingly diluted over the years as the NFL removes Sunday games and adds Thursday, Saturday and Monday Night games.
Still, DirecTV was willing to use “Sunday Ticket” as a loss leader if it turned subscribers into year-long satellite-TV customers. That way, the company could recoup some of its losses by collecting monthly pay-TV fees during the NFL season and its seven-month-long offseason.
Why Amazon makes sense
The NFL may be able to significantly expand the audience for “Sunday Ticket” by separating the product from DirecTV. The satellite-TV provider allows customers to stream “Sunday Ticket” without becoming a DirecTV customer only if they live in areas where they don’t have access to DirecTV. A streaming service would allow anyone access to “Sunday Ticket” without the additional restriction of having to switch one’s pay-TV provider to DirecTV. That could unlock the product to millions of Americans who buy cable TV service bundled with broadband. DirecTV doesn’t offer high-speed Internet service.
Amazon Web Services has also been the NFL’s technology provider in the development of Next Gen Stats, which has analyzed and stored data on every NFL player and play since 2017. The NFL has a history of working with broadcast partners with which it has established relationships. The league re-upped broadcast deals with all of its existing media partners earlier this year. While Apple’s spending power rivals Amazon’s, Apple doesn’t share the same relationship history with the NFL.
Buying live sports rights also allows Amazon to expand its business while regulators crackdown on big technology acquisitions. Amazon has previously been able to grow into new businesses by acquiring companies Whole Foods, Ring and Zappos. That avenue may be temporarily restricted as new FTC Chair Lina Khan, who has been critical of Amazon’s growing market power and influence on the economy, examines Amazon’s deals. How regulators view Amazon’s pending MGM deal will be a window into Khan’s thinking.
— CNBC’s Jabari Young assisted with this story.
Disclosure: NBCUniversal is the parent company of CNBC.
Facebook and Instagram icons are seen displayed on an iPhone.
Jakub Porzycki | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Meta on Wednesday introduced new safety features for teen users, including enhanced direct messaging protections to prevent “exploitative content.”
Teens will now see more information about who they’re chatting with, like when the Instagram account was created and other safety tips, to spot potential scammers. Teens will also be able to block and report accounts in a single action.
“In June alone, they blocked accounts 1 million times and reported another 1 million after seeing a Safety Notice,” the company said in a release.
This policy is part of a broader push by Meta to protect teens and children on its platforms, following mounting scrutiny from policymakers who accused the company of failing to shield young users from sexual exploitation.
Meta said it removed nearly 135,000 Instagram accounts earlier this year that were sexualizing children on the platform. The removed accounts were found to be leaving sexualized comments or requesting sexual images from adult-managed accounts featuring children.
The takedown also included 500,000 Instagram and Facebook accounts that were linked to the original profiles.
Read more CNBC tech news
Meta is now automatically placing teen and child-representing accounts into the strictest message and comment settings, which filter out offensive messages and limit contact from unknown accounts.
Users have to be at least 13 to use Instagram, but adults can run accounts representing children who are younger as long as the account bio is clear that the adult manages the account.
The platform was recently accused by several state attorneys general of implementing addictive features across its family of apps that have detrimental effects on children’s mental health.
Meta announced last week it removed about 10 million profiles for impersonating large content producers through the first half of 2025 as part of an effort by the company to combat “spammy content.”
Congress has renewed efforts to regulate social media platforms to focus on child safety. The Kids Online Safety Act was reintroduced to Congress in May after stalling in 2024.
The measure would require social media platforms to have a “duty of care” to prevent their products from harming children.
Snapchat was sued by New Mexico in September, alleging the app was creating an environment where “predators can easily target children through sextortion schemes.”
A series of iPhone 16s on display inside the Apple store at Tun Razak Exchange in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Sept. 20, 2024.
Annice Lyn | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Britain’s competition regulators on Wednesday took aim at the mobile ecosystems of Apple and Google, pushing the two companies to make changes to areas like their app stores.
On Wednesday, the Competition and Markets Authority proposed designating the U.S. tech giants as having a “strategic market status” or SMS, after opening an investigation into the matter in January.
This designation is given to a large company that has “substantial and entrenched market power” and a “position of strategic significance” with respect to a digital activity in the U.K.
The CMA can force firms that are branded as having SMS to change or stop specific behaviors or practices in order to address competition concerns.
Apple and Google both took issue with the CMA’s proposals, effectively saying they would be bad for user security and consumers overall.
What has the CMA taken issue with?
Britain’s regulator focused on investigating Apple and Google’s mobile operating systems, app store and browser. One aspect of the investigation looked at whether there are barriers that may prevent other competitors from offering rival products and services on the U.S. tech giants’ mobile platforms.
Another part of the probe examined whether Apple and Google are using their position in operating systems, app distribution or browsers to favor its own apps and services.
And the final aspect of the investigation studied whether Apple and Google require developers to sign up to “unfair terms and conditions” in order to distribute their apps via the respective app stores.
The CMA on Wednesday said consumers and businesses have raised concerns about different issues across the two companies’ mobile ecosystems. But some of these include “inconsistent and unpredictable app review processes” and “inconsistent app store search rankings” that may favor the tech giants’ own apps.
The British regulator also took aim at the up to 30% commission charged by the firms on some in-app purchases and restrictions on developers telling customers about cheaper ways to pay or to subscribe outside of the app.
As part of Google and Apple’s review process to allow apps on to their app stores, developers raised concerns that the tech companies could have access to commercially sensitive data of their competitors, the CMA said.
Google’s Android operating system commands just over 61% market share in the U.K., while Apple’s iOS has just over a 38%, according to Kantar data. Google runs the Google Play store and Chrome browser, and Apple has its App Store and Safari browser.
What changes does the CMA want?
The CMA has laid out immediate changes that it wants to see, alongside some longer-term steps. The regulator said that it wants Apple to review apps for distribution in a “fair, objective and transparent manner.” This could include remedies such as Apple explaining delays or rejections and creating an avenue for businesses to raise concerns about the process.
Apple could also be made to publish a methodology for how it ranks apps in the App Store. The CMA has laid out similar remedies for Google.
The regulator is looking at how Apple and Google can make it easy for users to be steered by developers outside of an app to pay for services and products, thus avoiding their respective in-app purchase fee.
The CMA is also looking into ways to make it easier for users to transfer data between Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android to make switching easier.
For next year, the CMA said it is still looking at whether to require Apple to allow alternative app stores in iOS and the company’s iPad software. The regulator also said it is exploring whether to force Apple to allow users to download apps directly from a developer’s own website, a practice known as “sideloading.”
Apple and Google react
Apple said in a statement that the proposals from the U.K. “would undermine the privacy and security protections that our users have come to expect, hamper our ability to innovate, and force us to give away our technology for free to foreign competitors,”
“We will continue to engage with the regulator to make sure they fully understand these risks.”
Google’s Senior Director of Competition Oliver Bethell noted that both the Google Chrome browser and Android’s operating system are built on open-source code.
“These offerings enable great choice, security and innovation for users. That’s why today’s announcement is both disappointing and unwarranted,” Bethell said.
The Google executive highlighted ways in which Android has helped British developers and the economy.
“It is therefore crucial that any new regulation is evidence-based, proportionate and does not become a roadblock to growth in the U.K We remain committed to constructive engagement with the CMA for the duration of this process,” Bethell said.
U.S. tech giants face European scrutiny
Apple and Google’s regulatory problems on the continent of Europe continue to deepen.
Apple has been forced to make a number of changes to the way it operates in the EU this year. These include allowing developers to tell their users about cheaper alternatives and bypass Apple’s in-app payment system.
Apple has long argued that forced regulator-led changes to its operations could lead to privacy and security issues for users and confusing business terms for developers
In March, Google parent Alphabet meanwhile was accused by the EU of failing to comply with the DMA. The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, said Google is treating its own search services more favorably than those of rivals. The Commission added that Google’s app store is preventing developers from steering consumer to other channels for better offers.
The search giant is also looking to fight a 4.1 billion euro fine that has stemmed from an antitrust case dating back to 2018.
The Texas Instruments headquarters in Dallas, Texas, on Jan. 21, 2024.
N. Johnson | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Texas Instrumentsreported second-quarter results on Tuesday that beat analysts’ expectations for revenue and earnings. But the stock fell in extended trading due to a third-quarter forecast that missed estimates.
Here’s how the chipmaker did versus LSEG consensus estimates:
Earnings per share: $1.41 vs. $1.35 expected
Revenue: $4.45 billion vs. $4.36 billion expected
Texas Instruments said it expects current-quarter earnings between $1.36 and $1.60 per share, while analysts were looking for $1.50 per share. The company forecast revenue of $4.45 billion to $4.8 billion, for a midpoint of $4.625 billion. Analysts were expecting revenue of $4.59 billion.
Revenue increased 16% in the second quarter from $3.82 billion in the same period a year earlier. Sales in the company’s analog chip business, its largest, rose 18% to $3.5 billion, surpassing the StreetAccount estimate of $3.39 billion for the segment.
Net income rose 15% to $1.3 billion, or $1.41 per share, from $1.13 billion, or $1.22 per share, a year ago.
Texas Instruments is a key supplier of legacy semiconductors for automotive and industrial uses.
As of Tuesday’s close, Texas Instruments shares were up 15% for the year on broader market optimism for chips. In June, the company said it would spend $60 billion to expand chipmaking factories in Texas and Utah, a move that was praised by the Trump administration in its push to bring more technology manufacturing to the U.S.
