Could a streamlined Sunday Ticket benfit the NFL AND consumers?

How much would you spend to watch your favorite NFL team, if you could pay per game?

If I told you that you could spend $30 per game or so, and watch your non-local team from the comfort of your couch, would you drop it? What if I told you it was $80 per game – would that change your opinion, or would you find somewhere that has the game to spend anything up to that to watch?

The latter is a sports bar’s dream, but the former? That’s the BEST you can do with NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube TV.

Indeed, despite all of the national and stand-alone windows in a 2026 NFL season that has games scheduled on SIX of the seven days of the week, we wonder: is the NFL sacrificing more of its biggest motivation – revenue – by NOT having any narrow-cast options for Sunday Ticket?

Week 1 was a perfect example of teams with long-time ‘national’ fan bases: FOX had Commanders-Eagles in its late national window, meaning Dolphins-Raiders was only available out of market in northern California and southern Idaho.

Meanwhile, in Denver, Missouri, you got to watch a Denver, Colorado rival - they, and the rest of the outer reaches of the Kansas City market, got Chargers-Cardinals instead of the national Vikings-Packers game. The other three AFC West markets all got the Bolts, even though that area of Missouri is geographically closer to both Green Bay and Minneapolis than Los Angeles and Phoenix (and also in the same time zone).

So here’s where Sunday Ticket comes in: the Raiders do not currently play on Monday night, Sunday night, Thursday night, or in any stand-alone window, so outside of Christmas week – where they likely have national run in the late Sunday window on CBS – fans in either of their former homes might need to find alternate ways to watch.

Even at the full price of $480 plus tax, you’re only gonna spend $30-$40 per game – cheaper than a dozen wings and a couple beers, plus tip, at your local watering hole! – AND be able to watch any game(s) you want in the other Sunday window.

But what if you’re an Eagles fan on the Jersey shore, just north of the NYC/Philly market line? Even as an ‘out of market’ area, you can watch AT LEAST 11 of 17 games, because the Birds have two Monday nighters, two Sunday nighters, two Thursday games (including Thanksgiving), and a Saturday game, plus one international window; add in two games against the Giants and the Week 1 game that was FOX’s national slate, and there are six games not available to them via local TV or streaming…yet.

A few of those will hold (Week 2 has the Jets on FOX in the same time slot), and maybe some won’t (Week 11 vs. Pittsburgh is the ‘national’ game on CBS, even as the Jets are in FOX’s late window), but at best/worst, your Ticket experience is costing you $80 per game to watch a game that might actually be closer to you than the one at MetLife.

So, revenue is king, but how many people like the above Eagles fans are the NFL potentially losing more money from, because they don’t want to shell out $500 for six (or less) games? There’s something to be said for sitting on your own couch, but for $80, if the choice is that plus my own snacks or a quick trip to the bar with some grub and brew?

MLB.tv has long had a single-team option for its yearly service, which is cheaper than the full package – this year, it was $100-$130 vs. $150 – and while that discount isn’t too big, it’s also covering probably 130 games minimum, making it somewhere around $1 per game or about $5 a week!

There will be teams, like the Raiders, where a similar option for NFL Sunday Ticket would be a better value, but in an 18-week season, would you be more willing to pay $5ish a week – let’s say $89.99 to be fairly round – for one game?

Maybe, if your team is on a bye or on local/national/streaming, you get to ‘unlock’ one game elsewhere? Or maybe not, and it’s a straight hundo whether you get six games or 17? Either one is a better option, although for me this week, I could’ve easily been convinced to watch Bills-Texans instead of either local early game (Jets-Titans and Steelers-Falcons) if I could.

Sadly, it’s not, because I didn’t want to pay $80 minimum (more, since I’ll be at one of the six Eagles games not guaranteed to be on my TV) to watch future games.

Perhaps YouTube and the NFL have done the research and found that so many full customers would downgrade that they wouldn’t make up the revenue with new partial subscribers? Or, maybe, the NFL is making enough money that they can offer one product, take it or leave it, and more will take it than leave it?

The market dictates the price of anything, but they’re already offering discounts to new subscribers, students, and other segments – and as the old saying goes, ‘a penny wise, a pound foolish.’

Perhaps one of these years, the NFL, or YouTube, or both, could risk losing a few pounds to see if brand loyalty really is as strong as they perceive.