DirecTV and EverPass Media have forged a new agreement that reshapes how NFL Sunday Ticket reaches commercial venues across the United States. By striking this expanded distribution deal, both companies are streamlining Sunday Ticket access for bars, restaurants, hotels, and other public spaces—just in time for the 2024 NFL season. Why does this matter to business owners and venue managers? This post breaks down the latest developments in the deal, explores its impact on the commercial sector, and details what your business stands to gain or adjust as a result.
DirecTV and EverPass Media formalized a new distribution agreement in April 2024, solidifying their partnership for commercial delivery of NFL Sunday Ticket. Under this deal, DirecTV holds nationwide rights to distribute NFL Sunday Ticket in commercial venues—bars, restaurants, hotels, casinos, and retail locations—through the 2024 NFL season. The terms specify coverage for all out-of-market Sunday afternoon games, now available in over 300,000 eligible storefronts.
This partnership brings notable expansions compared to prior years. For the first time, commercial venues can access NFL Sunday Ticket via both satellite and streaming, building redundancy and flexibility into their viewing options. During the 2023 season, EverPass piloted a digital-only approach, but the 2024 arrangement folds DirecTV’s network-driven capabilities into a hybrid model. Now, businesses in rural areas or structures where cable access is unreliable will not lose NFL Sunday Ticket access, as traditional DirecTV satellite hardware remains eligible.
Additionally, the expanded partnership promises enhanced customer support, seamless registration processes, and turnkey solutions for qualifying commercial accounts. Larger chains, such as Buffalo Wild Wings and Marriott hotels, now negotiate directly with DirecTV’s enterprise sales teams, streamlining licensing at scale.
Quotes from senior executives support the significance of this deal. Rob Thun, DirecTV’s Chief Content Officer, stated, “Maintaining the ability to deliver NFL Sunday Ticket to our commercial customers—regardless of technological challenges—remains a core priority, and our partnership with EverPass strengthens that commitment.”
Alex Kaplan, CEO of EverPass Media, added, “With DirecTV, we’re building infrastructure that ensures the NFL’s biggest moments reach fans in every possible environment, driving value for partners and venues nationwide.”
NFL Media also weighed in. According to an NFL spokesperson quoted by Sports Business Journal in April 2024, “This expanded framework guarantees uninterrupted Sunday afternoon coverage for millions of fans in commercial spaces. The NFL remains committed to wide access in public venues.”
DirecTV first secured exclusive rights to NFL Sunday Ticket in 1994. For nearly thirty years, DirecTV held these rights, making it the main provider of out-of-market NFL games for residential viewers in the United States. Each year, millions of subscribers tuned in, eager to follow teams outside their local area. The partnership generated significant value: by 2014, the deal extended for eight more years, with DirecTV agreeing to pay the NFL over $1.5 billion annually, according to Sports Business Journal and The Wall Street Journal. This longstanding relationship helped establish NFL Sunday Ticket as a core differentiator in the competitive pay-TV market.
While DirecTV previously controlled residential distribution, shifts in media consumption forced a strategic pivot. As of 2023, Google’s YouTube acquired exclusive residential streaming rights for NFL Sunday Ticket. Yet, commercial distribution—serving bars, restaurants, hotels, and other out-of-home locations—remained with DirecTV, now through an expanded partnership with EverPass Media.
Through this evolution, DirecTV continues to play a critical role by delivering live NFL action to venues nationwide. As sports fans increasingly seek communal viewing experiences, this commercial focus ensures DirecTV maintains its relevance and presence in the evolving NFL media landscape.
Founded in 2023, EverPass Media operates as a specialist sports media distribution company. The firm emerged from a joint investment by private equity giant RedBird Capital Partners and the National Football League itself. With a mission to bring premium live sports to commercial establishments, EverPass Media stands out through its exclusive focus on out-of-home distribution channels. Key industry leaders, including ex-Endeavor executive Alex Kaplan, drive company strategy. The platform delivers curated live sports, starting with the NFL Sunday Ticket package, to a nationwide roster of bars, restaurants, hotels, and other hospitality businesses.
Why did DirecTV turn to EverPass Media? After Google’s YouTube acquired residential streaming rights for NFL Sunday Ticket in 2023, a distinct market gap appeared in commercial venue distribution. The NFL and RedBird Capital recognized this, prompting them to launch EverPass Media and grant it exclusive commercial rights for the package beginning with the 2023 season.
In May 2023, DIRECTV and EverPass Media publicly announced their expanded partnership. Through this multi-year deal, DirecTV secured non-residential distribution rights for NFL Sunday Ticket and other premium sports content managed by EverPass. During negotiations, EverPass leveraged its exclusive NFL rights, while DirecTV contributed decades of experience servicing over 300,000 commercial venues.
EverPass Media holds exclusive nationwide distribution rights to NFL Sunday Ticket for bars, restaurants, casinos, and retail locations. The company manages all aspects of licensing, from negotiating venue contracts to ensuring seamless live broadcast feeds. EverPass acts as a bridge—coordinating with the NFL, DIRECTV, and local businesses to deploy Sunday Ticket to thousands of TVs every game day.
With EverPass operating as the exclusive out-of-home rights holder, the NFL maintains centralized control, increases revenue stability, and reduces fragmentation of its product in commercial spaces. This arrangement showcases how the league adapts its media strategy for varied customer segments, setting a template for future premium sports distribution.
DirecTV and EverPass Media have restructured NFL Sunday Ticket distribution by directly targeting restaurants, bars, hotels, and similar commercial establishments. Through the 2023 partnership, more than 300,000 business locations across the United States now receive access to out-of-market NFL games every Sunday—a marked increase from the previous footprint. Leveraging DirecTV’s satellite infrastructure, EverPass enables seamless content delivery even in environments where high-speed internet might prove unreliable. As a result, owners of hospitality venues no longer need to negotiate individual streaming contracts or worry about fluctuating internet quality.
Commercial venues benefit immediately from this broader access. With live NFL Sunday Ticket programming available throughout the regular season, sports bars and restaurants experience spikes in patron numbers during game windows. According to National Restaurant Association data, sports programming increases customer dwell time by up to 20% during key events, often translating into higher food and beverage sales. Smaller venues, previously unable to secure legal group viewing rights, can now compete with major chains by featuring out-of-market matchups unavailable through standard cable or local broadcasts.
Residential subscribers access NFL Sunday Ticket through streaming platforms like YouTube TV, but commercial distribution requires a different approach. Licensing for businesses covers group exhibition rights and accounts for occupancy fire codes, floor plans, and the number of display units. The agreement between DirecTV and EverPass eliminates previous channel limitations for commercial clients—now, all out-of-market matchups stream simultaneously with guaranteed signal quality. Residential plans lack these multi-feed, multi-TV features. In public venues, this ensures every patron, no matter where seated, can follow their chosen game.
Do you manage a bar or restaurant that draws in sports fans? Imagine your revenue potential if every customer could watch their home team, regardless of the broadcast region. With the redefined commercial rights, that scenario becomes reality under the expanded partnership between DirecTV and EverPass Media.
A rapid transformation shapes the global sports broadcasting industry, and this latest DirecTV, EverPass strike distribution deal finds its place at the center. Traditional cable packages continue to devolve as rights-holders redefine distribution through partnerships bridging satellite, streaming, and commercial platforms. In 2022, global sports media rights revenue reached $55.14 billion, with North America accounting for over one-third, according to SportBusiness. Within that landscape, the NFL holds the most lucrative domestic rights package, closing multipartner deals valued at approximately $110 billion through 2033 (NFL, March 2021).
New agreements rarely occur in a vacuum. The deal aligns with a broader push by leagues and broadcasters to create hybrid models. DirecTV, collaborating with EverPass, strengthens satellite’s relevance just as streaming giants like YouTube TV, Amazon, and Apple aggressively court sports leagues. Where do you see the strongest growth—traditional linear TV or streaming-only models? Consider how this dynamic affects content discovery and the overall value proposition for end-users.
Securing maximum audience reach motivates the NFL’s media strategy. While shifting residential consumer rights to YouTube TV’s Sunday Ticket, the league simultaneously maintains commercial distribution via DirecTV and EverPass. This dual-track approach underpins the NFL’s intent to solidify presence across high-traffic venues—bars, restaurants, hotels—that cannot efficiently rely on internet infrastructure.
Take a moment and ask yourself—how often have you seen a crowded sports bar driving energy on NFL Sundays? Agreements like these keep those communal experiences alive and illustrate how commercial rights form a critical component in the league’s holistic media blueprint.
When NFL Sunday Ticket moved from DirecTV's long-standing exclusive hold to YouTube TV and YouTube Primetime Channels in 2023, the distribution model for NFL games shifted dramatically. Beginning in the 2023 season, residential access to NFL Sunday Ticket transitioned to streaming platforms, with YouTube reporting over 1.3 million residential subscriptions, according to Google’s Q4 2023 earnings. Meanwhile, satellite TV, primarily through DirecTV, retained commercial distribution rights for businesses such as sports bars and restaurants, managed via the EverPass Media partnership. This dual-channel strategy has altered both how and where fans experience out-of-market NFL games.
Business owners now face a clear-cut decision: Should they stick with satellite TV or migrate to streaming solutions for NFL game coverage? Examine these contrasting options:
Restaurants and bars lean heavily on reliability and operational simplicity. Satellite infrastructure, requiring minimal on-site upgrades, lets staff control numerous screens through a central box. Imagine a sports bar with a dozen screens—switching channels on satellite is seamless, whereas with streaming, logging into multiple devices can cause delays, customer frustration, and workflow disruption.
Ask yourself, if you own a bar in a rural area without gigabit internet, would streaming offer the same seamless experience? According to Nielsen’s 2023 Local Watch Report, only 82% of U.S. bars in non-urban markets have the required broadband to guarantee smooth 4K streams on several large TVs. Additionally, streaming platforms often enforce stricter concurrent stream limits, complicating the traditional multi-game setup on game days.
Hybrid adoption has emerged. Many commercial venues maintain their satellite subscriptions for guaranteed NFL coverage while experimenting with streaming services for flexibility and supplemental content. This strategy allows them to compare picture quality, viewer experience, and total costs in real time.
DirecTV and EverPass have struck a distribution agreement that immediately increases the accessibility of NFL Sunday Ticket games in the United States. This partnership makes more than 270 out-of-market Sunday afternoon NFL games available live in over 300,000 commercial venues, according to DirecTV’s internal analysis and public disclosures (DirecTV, 2023). Large sports bars in metropolitan areas, small-town restaurants, urban hotels, and national chains—these settings all become part of the expanded NFL content ecosystem. With this deal, the footprint for live NFL games extends far beyond what residential streaming and satellite subscriptions achieved on their own.
Which types of audiences become reachable in this environment? Office workers gathering at a downtown pub, travelers stopping in at airport lounges, hotel guests in lobbies, fans attending events at large entertainment venues. By activating this network of commercial distribution, the partnership positions NFL content in front of millions who may not watch NFL games at home. Nielsen’s 2022 data highlights nearly 60% of fans aged 21-34 report watching sports at bars or restaurants at least occasionally (Nielsen Scarborough USA+ Release 2 2022). Bringing NFL Sunday Ticket to these locations will capture incremental, mobile, and social viewership, especially among younger adults.
What changes as NFL games break past the limits of private living rooms? Stadium-sized screens, group celebrations, real-time reactions—these communal elements reshape fan experience and content discovery. The NFL’s distribution model, previously focused on in-home audiences, now deliberately targets out-of-home viewers. With the new partnership, the NFL signals a clear intent to balance exclusivity with reach. Families without cable or satellite, streaming-only households, or those seeking shared experiences outside their homes find NFL content easier to access than ever before. The result: a nationwide mosaic of viewing options, delivering Sunday Ticket action far beyond traditional boundaries.
DirecTV and EverPass Media have expanded the reach of NFL Sunday Ticket, fueling a dramatic increase in access to out-of-market games within public venues. Fans who gather at sports bars or restaurants now enjoy a far wider menu of live NFL matchups, breaking through the regional broadcast limits of conventional networks. Customers in Pennsylvania, for example, can watch a Chargers vs. Dolphins showdown on Sunday afternoon just as easily as a local Eagles contest, all from the same barstool. Demand data from Nielsen (2023) estimates that out-of-market NFL games draw a 42% higher audience in commercial venues compared to local broadcasts, highlighting a strong appetite for variety.
Sunday Ticket stands as a proven driver of business for restaurants, sports bars, and similar establishments. Industry surveys by Technomic (2023) show that 58% of sports bar patrons cite “access to multiple NFL games” as a primary reason for choosing one venue over another on game days. Owners see a measurable return: Nielsen Scarborough research (2023) attributes up to 19% higher Sunday sales in locations offering full NFL access compared to those limited to local or streaming-only options. Expanded coverage encourages longer patron visits, larger group gatherings, and increased food and beverage purchases.
Have you noticed a change in your local sports bar or restaurant atmosphere since the Sunday Ticket expansion? Which out-of-market matchup drew the biggest crowd? The answers reveal how NFL media partnerships shape not just TV schedules, but the very rhythm of public sports culture.
The expanded partnership around NFL Sunday Ticket brings tangible financial gains for DirecTV, EverPass Media, and commercial establishments such as restaurants and sports bars. With exclusive distribution rights for bars, restaurants, and hospitality venues, DirecTV and EverPass tap into an estimated 300,000+ commercial locations in the U.S. According to EverPass, this approach enables direct commercial licensing, letting these venues legally show out-of-market NFL games—a key product anticipated to generate significant incremental revenue for rights holders (source).
Commercial venues benefit by leveraging live NFL content to drive traffic during game days, which corresponds with a measurable increase in food and beverage sales. Businesses that show NFL Sunday Ticket report sales increases ranging from 20% to 50% on game days compared to non-event days, according to industry groups such as the National Restaurant Association. By featuring live out-of-market NFL games, these locations attract larger crowds, keep guests longer, and raise average per-check revenue.
EverPass and DirecTV structure their agreements based on venue capacity and type—rates start in the low thousands and can reach tens of thousands of dollars per season for high-traffic locations. The NFL’s commercial rights pricing model, previously outlined in Sports Business Journal, points to a well-established tiered system where theaters, casinos, and hotel lounges pay premium access fees, while smaller venues receive scalable options. This tiered pricing model ensures that every square foot of NFL-viewing real estate is monetized to maximum effect.
Would a sports bar ever consider another investment over Sunday Ticket access during football season? For most, the answer is no. Market research from Technomic revealed that nearly 70% of surveyed sports bars rated NFL out-of-market programming as their top-priority entertainment spend (source).
This expanded partnership creates greater inventory for local and national advertising inside commercial venues. Restaurant and bar operators invest in in-house promotions and cross-selling opportunities when NFL games are on. Further, advertisers target highly engaged audiences at key dayparts. EverPass Media reports a higher fill rate for digital ad spots during NFL game windows in commercial environments versus standard programming—sometimes topping 90% capacity during premium games.
Sponsors, including beverage and snack brands, negotiate exclusive deals for in-venue marketing during Sunday Ticket broadcasts, oftentimes commanding premiums due to the captive, sports-centric audience. According to Nielsen Scarborough, 28 million U.S. adults watched NFL games in a bar or restaurant at least once in 2023. This sizable foot traffic translates into increased real-world impressions for brands, who then raise their ad budgets specifically for NFL programming across commercial floors.
How will stakeholders tweak these strategies as streaming continues to reshape live sports distribution? Venue operators, rights holders, and advertisers will likely evolve their playbooks with every broadcast season, maximizing the value of exclusive rights to America’s most-watched sport.
Exclusive sports licensing agreements generate significant business value for rights holders, distributors, and commercial partners. When DirecTV and EverPass Media secured the expanded partnership deal around NFL Sunday Ticket, the NFL further demonstrated the financial muscle of exclusivity. According to Forbes, the NFL earned over $12 billion annually in media rights for the 2023 season (Forbes, 2022), which includes leverage gained through exclusive broadcasts and distribution.
Exclusive agreements elevate the value proposition of platforms like DirecTV. Fans and commercial establishments gain access to content they cannot obtain elsewhere, driving up subscriber loyalty and justifying premium pricing. This dynamic holds for both residential packages and commercial offerings in bars, restaurants, and hotels. Content exclusivity also empowers rights holders to negotiate better terms with advertisers and sponsors since they can promise unrivaled audience reach.
For sports fans, exclusive arrangements determine where—and sometimes if—they can watch beloved games. Commercial venues rely on these deals to draw crowds, increase dwell time, and boost food and beverage receipts. According to NPD Group, sports programming can increase bar and restaurant sales by as much as 19% on game days (NPD Group, 2021). Without exclusive access, establishments lose the edge that sets them apart from home viewing.
What major sport would you most want as an exclusive to your favorite service? Which platform would you never give up for game day coverage?
The DirecTV and EverPass Media partnership around NFL Sunday Ticket distribution marks a significant evolution in sports media rights. This expanded agreement grants DirecTV exclusive commercial distribution rights for Sunday Ticket in the U.S., while EverPass brings its experience managing venue-based media solutions. Collectively, these entities now reach thousands of bars, restaurants, and other commercial venues—broadening access to out-of-market NFL games for sports fans in public settings.
For U.S. businesses operating in hospitality, this partnership enables seamless access to the full NFL Sunday Ticket package through familiar DirecTV technology and support. Operators no longer face uncertainty over sourcing separate streaming solutions or managing technical upgrades to accommodate in-demand NFL content. By capitalizing on DirecTV’s satellite TV infrastructure and EverPass’ distribution capabilities, venues provide a dependable game-day gathering place—driving higher patronage, longer customer dwell times, and incremental food and beverage sales on every NFL Sunday.
Sports fans benefit from expanded choice: more locations offer the complete NFL Sunday Ticket lineup, including all out-of-market Sunday afternoon games, as well as new opportunities to watch the action in energetic group settings. Businesses leverage the agreement’s terms to market NFL experiences aggressively, knowing they'll be able to deliver every matchup without geographical blackouts or streaming bandwidth limitations. Curious how your restaurant or bar can activate this package, or what pricing tiers exist for your market segment? Most answers come directly from confirming your eligibility with DirecTV or an authorized EverPass distributor.
The NFL cements a forward-thinking distribution strategy by prioritizing both broadcast and digital channel growth, thus maximizing fan reach and creating diversified revenue streams. Licensing agreements like this drive year-over-year growth in sports rights, as evidenced by the league’s rising media revenue reported in its financial disclosures: NFL media rights deals generated over $10 billion annually as of 2023 (Sportico).
Ready to see what this partnership can unlock for your venue or fan experience? Visit DirecTV’s official NFL business page or contact EverPass for customized installation details and Sunday Ticket pricing for your location. Share your feedback with peers—how will you use this new access to attract customers or enhance your sports programming?
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