NFL Sunday Ticket stopped working and NFL Twitter was not happy
By Josh Hill
It was a rough day for NFL Sunday Ticket, which was apparently not working for a large portion of fans trying to watch some Week 2 action.
For anyone who woke up on Sunday morning expecting to have a carefree football viewing experience, NFL Sunday Ticket had other plans.
As streaming has become more and more normalized, our consumption of sports has fundamentally changed. From MLB.tv to NBA League Pass, it’s so much easier to tune in and see what sports you want to see.
Unless that sport is the NFL.
A dinosaur in terms of getting with the technological times, the NFL is a million miles behind even the NHL when it comes to accessibility to gameday streaming. When you’re even further behind than hockey, you know it’s time to change some things up.
NFL Sunday Ticket was revolutionary in its time, giving fans everywhere a way to watch games outside of their market. But that was the early-90s and times have significantly changed. In the year of our lord 2022, it should not be as hard as Sunday Ticket makes it to stream the NFL.
Instead of enjoying another weekend full of football, fans spent their time on Twitter complaining about how NFL Sunday Ticket — the product meant to provide them with football — was preventing them from actually watching it.
I truly can’t wait until DirecTV loses NFL Sunday Ticket. pic.twitter.com/GzBW9VnTDQ
— wickym (@wickym) September 18, 2022
And my @DIRECTV Sunday Ticket app is once again not working, after I got an email from them this week assuring me they fixed the technical glitches from last week.
— Michael David Smith (@MichaelDavSmith) September 18, 2022
So Sunday Ticket is just flat out not working now?
— Albert Breer (@AlbertBreer) September 18, 2022
Business idea. NFL Sunday Ticket but it actually works on Sundays.
— Will Hershey (@maybebullish) September 18, 2022
Sunday ticket: pic.twitter.com/PpTJXSu3Lc
— Kevin Clark (@bykevinclark) September 18, 2022
Currently, whoever makes NFL Sunday Ticket magically appear on my TV screen every Sunday. https://t.co/bWa0ya3iYw
— Alex Clancy (@ClancysCorner) September 18, 2022
Paying for NFL Sunday Ticket is fun because you get to commiserate with people on Twitter about it not working just before your team finally scores a touchdown
— Mary Ellen McIntire (@MelMcIntire) September 18, 2022
NFL Sunday ticket is an inexcusably poor product, my god.
— Timothy Rapp (@TRappaRT) September 18, 2022
Another year of shitty service from @DIRECTV while trying to watch NFL Sunday Ticket. The sooner they lose the rights to this the better. Awful service. @NFL @nflcommish pic.twitter.com/K7oqlppg5I
— Nopeazoid (@siccorsiccor) September 18, 2022
Here’s why this is significant: The NFL streaming rights are up for grabs and each issue like this is another nail in Sunday Ticket’s coffin.
The NFL might be slow to progress but once it sees the future it becomes the force of business nature it is. Jeff Bezos was getting cozy with Roger Goodell during the first Thursday Night Football game that Amazon owned the rights to broadcast exclusively, and Apple is looming large in the background as well.
Apple has already struck a deal with MLB to broadcast Friday Night games exclusively and it has its sights set on the NFL. Imagine logging into iTunes or your Apple TV and paying a flat fee for a game the same way you do a movie or TV show — and with the same ease.
NFL Sunday Ticket seems like a thing of the past, especially with such archaic problems when other modern solutions exist.