NFL, RedBird joint venture EverPass to manage ‘Sunday Ticket’ streaming in bars, restaurants – NBC Chicago

• EverPass Media, the joint venture between the NFL and RedBird Capital Partners that owns the commercial rights to “Sunday Ticket,” will focus on live streaming of sports games in bars and restaurants.
• EverPass acquired UPshow, a marketing platform that enables live sports streaming at commercial venues. Previously, “Sunday Ticket” was offered to such venues via DirecTV’s satellite service.
• The joint venture also gained a new investor: TKO, the company made up of the recently merged WWE and UFC.

A satellite dish is no longer the only way bars and restaurants can broadcast the National Football League’s “Sunday Ticket” games.

EverPass Media, the joint venture between the league and private equity firm RedBird Capital Partners that owns the commercial rights to “Sunday Ticket,” has acquired UPshow, a platform with the technical capabilities to enable commercial establishments to stream live sports. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The acquisition will allow bars, restaurants, casinos and other businesses to stream Sunday Ticket games, which until recently could only be done through a subscription to satellite TV provider DirecTV.

DirecTV will remain a distributor for bars and restaurants, however. EverPass signed a non-exclusive deal with DirecTV last year to continue distributing the “Sunday Ticket” games, giving it the ability to strike deals with other distribution platforms.

“More content is being streamed. Regardless of the streaming economy, it’s become pretty clear that live sports is a big part of that,” said EverPass CEO Alex Kaplan. “We’re going to think about how we can deliver a product and service to our customers that is increasingly difficult for them to aggregate in a meaningful way. We’re still in the early stages … but this is a big step for us.”

The new distribution option will be available starting with the upcoming NFL season.

The acquisition of EverPass comes at a time when more live sports are being offered exclusively through streaming services, presenting a new challenge for corporate institutions that have long relied on traditional pay TV packages to deliver live sports.

“Sunday Ticket” is a must-have sports package for bars and restaurants as it offers all non-regional NFL games.

In late 2022, Google’s YouTube TV acquired the residential rights to “Sunday Ticket” for about $2 billion annually, a deal that will last seven years. DirecTV has been the owner and exclusive residential and commercial distributor of the games since the package’s inception in 1994.

This followed a deal that saw Amazon’s Prime Video become the exclusive home of Thursday Night Football, as part of the NFL’s 11-year media rights deal worth more than $100 billion.

Since then, NFL media rights holders have begun offering the games simultaneously — and in some cases exclusively — on their streaming services. Earlier this year, Comcast-owned NBCUniversal aired an NFL Wild Card game on Peacock, the first time a postseason game has been offered exclusively via streaming. Netflix also recently won the rights to air two NFL games on Christmas this year, and at least one on the holiday in the next two years.

New investor, new opportunities

EverPass also attracted a new investor this week.

The joint venture announced that TKO — the recently merged company that combines Ultimate Fighting Championship and World Wrestling Entertainment — will join the ownership group. TKO is majority owned by Endeavor Group Holdings.

“With RedBird, the NFL and TKO behind us, we believe we have the resources to leverage that technology even further,” Kaplan said.

In addition to “Sunday Ticket” and the NFL, EverPass also wants to become a distributor of other content.

“We’re looking for new content and we certainly think they have great content and expect those to be discussions we’ll have for the foreseeable future,” Kaplan said of whether EverPass will distribute TKO’s WWE or UFC. “Overall, we feel good about our content pipeline.”

The company first partnered with UPshow when it began offering Peacock Sports Pass, a way for commercial properties to stream a number of live sports on NBCUniversal’s streaming platform, including the NFL, Premier League and college football.

The price for the Peacock Sports Pass, similar to the upcoming distribution of “Sunday Ticket”, depends on the classification of the commercial establishment, according to the company’s website.

Additionally, the acquisition of UPshow gives EverPass the opportunity for global distribution as leagues like the NFL, National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball increasingly enter international markets.

“Technology transcends borders. So all of a sudden we have the ability to go international,” said Derek Chang, executive chairman of EverPass. “And then the investment from Endeavor/TKO, which clearly has a huge reach globally in terms of relationships.”

Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC.