The Pittsburgh Steelers and the rest of the National Football League are in for a change up to their NFL Sunday Ticket package every weekend starting next season. It has been reported recently that Google/YouTube TV has won the bidding war for the rights to air NFL Sunday Ticket, beating out Apple, Amazon, and ESPN. It is a seven-year deal valued at just north of $2 billion per year, which totals out to be a $14 billion+ deal for the NFL.
For a few decades, the Sunday Ticket package was on DirecTV, but with many people all over the nation ditching cable services in favor of streaming sites, the NFL has decided to shift its focus to the streams as well.
PITTSBURGH, PA - JANUARY 14: Pittsburgh Steelers fans cheer as a stadium staff member waves a Terrible Towel flag during the second quarter against the Jacksonville Jaguars in the AFC Divisional Playoff game at Heinz Field on January 14, 2018 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Brett Carlsen/Getty Images)
Ideally, this should be able to reach more football fans, including Steeler Nation that litters the country and the globe with Terrible Towels. YouTube TV also hopes that acquiring the package would mean their revenue will get a major boost, especially during football season, now that they can broadcast every single game worldwide. Reaching to new people could also potentially help with growing piracy problems due to blackouts, as providing a better service to stream on would theoretically lead to less people looking for ways to cheat the system, even though some still will.
How Sunday Ticket on YouTube TV impacts the Steelers
As mentioned earlier, more Steelers fans will be able to watch the games live with the downfall of cable and rise in streaming. While this does help other teams, this especially helps the fans of the Steelers, who are well known for being all over the place. Anyone that’s nowhere near Pittsburgh that wants to watch the games have to find alternative methods currently, some of them being less legal than others. The more fans that can watch a game normally, the better everyone is.
The biggest reason comes with the incoming spike in cap space. Besides the COVID year, the cap ceiling is normally raised a few million dollars per season for the NFL. Now that there’s all of this extra cash that the league will get, you can reasonably expect the cap to jump even higher than normal, possibly by $10+ million. Some of these teams that are slammed up against the cap ceiling will get some much needed help now.
Some of these players will be able to get away with demanding more money to play for a team, now that their agents and them know that teams will be able to afford their price tag better than they could before.
As of December 2022, the Steelers have just over $20 million in cap space for the 2023 season. If you factor in roll-over and the normal raise of the ceiling, that number will jump to roughly $27 million before a single move is made. Considering how much cap is saved for draftees and potential in-season acquisitions, that’s likely only enough for some re-signs and a couple of outside depth signings.
Of course, there’s ways to manipulate the cap (which Omar Khan mastered while working under Kevin Colbert), but generally they want to take as little cap flexibility from the future as possible, and cut as few “cap casualties” as possible.
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With this new influx of cap space, among other normal factors, the Steelers could easily have $35 million or more in cap space. Instead of just small depth signings, they could now go out and make a splash move, like signing James Bradberry to boost the secondary. Instead of choosing between Terrell Edmunds and Damontae Kazee, they could keep both and keep that much-needed depth at the safety position.
There are still candidates for cuts and restructures, like William Jackson III, who does not carry any dead cap from being cut. Either way, the money coming in from this new deal with YouTube TV should provide a major boost to Omar Khan in his first full off-season as GM, while also making Steelers fans happier with watching the live broadcasts.
What are your thoughts on the impact of this deal for the Steelers or the NFL as a whole? Leave a comment below.
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