DirecTV’s decision to make its “Sunday Ticket” package available to Sony Corp. PlayStation 3 users may be the first step toward giving viewers access to out-of-market NFL games on a range of Web-enabled devices, a DirecTV executive said.
“If this test is successful, we have the opportunity to distribute ‘Sunday Ticket’ through various different devices, and we’re certainly open to relationships with other consoles and Internet-connected devices,” Alex Kaplan, senior director of sports marketing and product strategy for DirecTV, said in a telephone interview.
DirecTV, the largest U.S. satellite-television provider, announced a partnership with Sony this week that allows PlayStation 3 users to stream as many as 14 games each Sunday. For non-DirecTV subscribers, the entire season costs $339.95 a year. It’s the first time the company has made its exclusive National Football League rights available to nonsubscribers on a nonmobile, television-connected device, enabling them to watch games on their high-definition TVs.
DirecTV, based in El Segundo, Calif., is migrating to providing Internet-connected viewing as more people choose online-video services. The top six U.S. publicly traded cable and satellite companies lost a record 580,000 video subscribers in the second quarter, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
