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YouTube begins offering free trials to NFL Sunday Ticket

YouTube says it will soon allow streamers to try out the NFL Sunday Ticket on its two video platforms for free before committing to a monthly or annual subscription to the package.

Starting this week, YouTube is extending trial offers that gives streamers free access to NFL Sunday Ticket for seven days.



The offer is available to those who sign up for NFL Sunday Ticket through YouTube TV or YouTube Primetime Channels when they sign up for the package with or without NFL RedZone. The deal is also available to streamers who sign up for a free trial to YouTube TV, which costs $73 a month and includes live access to local ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC stations as well as ESPN.

There are some eligibility requirements for the free trial offer: It isn’t available to those who purchase YouTube TV through a third party like Verizon, Frontier or Wow!, and current or former subscribers of YouTube TV who have paid for NFL Sunday Ticket or NFL Sunday Ticket with RedZone in the past are also not eligible for the NFL Sunday Ticket free trial offer.

To learn more about eligibility requirements and how to redeem a free trial to NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube TV or YouTube Primetime Channels, click or tap here.

NFL Sunday Ticket and NFL RedZone officially launch on Sunday, September 10. This is the first season that NFL Sunday Ticket has been offered on YouTube after Google secured the rights to the package after its exclusive, multi-decade run on DirecTV (the satellite broadcaster will still offer the package to business customers).

Last month, YouTube began allowing streamers to purchase the NFL Sunday Ticket through monthly installments that are equal to the retail price of the package, which costs $350 per season on YouTube TV or $450 when purchased as a standalone package on YouTube Primetime Channels.

The monthly installment option isn’t available to streamers in seven states — Georgia, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Nevada and Tennessee — because of local laws restricting how the package can be sold.

YouTube also announced plans for a student rate that will allow eligible students at accredited colleges and universities to pay for the NFL Sunday Ticket at a reduced price. It wasn’t clear from the announcement if students will have to pay for the package all at once, or if the monthly option will be extended to them as well.

Officials at YouTube said they are working on a number of other features, including multiple multiview screens that will allow NFL Sunday Ticket buyers to watch several games at once (though, due to technical limitations, it appears YouTube will determine which games are offered through multiview screens, and won’t allow subscribers to create multiview screens on their own — a similar feature is offered for news, business and general sports channels now, with no way to customize the channels).

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About the Author:

Matthew Keys

Matthew Keys is a nationally-recognized, award-winning journalist who has covered the business of media, technology, radio and television for more than 11 years. He is the publisher of The Desk and contributes to Know Techie, Digital Content Next and StreamTV Insider. He previously worked for Thomson Reuters, the Walt Disney Company, McNaughton Newspapers and Tribune Broadcasting.
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