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What's more it appears to be incredibly terrible math.<br />
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The seekingalpha article says the assumptions are 1.7 million "new" subscribers to Youtube TV (plus NFLST) and a half million NFLST only subscribers.<br />
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If you do the math 1.7 million subscribers to Youtube TV at $65/month is $1.326 billion, and 2.25 million subscribers to NFLST at $300/year is $675 million.<br />
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OK, that adds up to $2.001 billion so $1 million a year in profit after paying the NFL $2 billion, right? Only if you assume Google has zero cost not only for delivering NFLST, but for delivering Youtube TV! And they obviously don't for the latter after paying $10 for ESPN and $25 for local channels, not to mention the rest. They probably don't even make a profit at $65/month but even if they do it is only a few dollars a month not $65 a month!<br />
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Now obviously Youtube is banking on individually targeted advertising to create revenue, using the 2 to 4 minutes per hour reserved for local affiliates (for NFLST and other network broadcasts) or commercial insertion slots for "cable TV" channels like ESPN or HGTV. How much they make from that is the unknown, but that's obviously where they hope to monetize NFLST (especially if they can get people to "cord cut" from cable/satellite and sign up for their virtual cord)
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</blockquote>In addition, <i>you won't even need to subscribe to YouTube TV in order to buy NFLST</i>. Yes, it will be offered via YTTV but they're also going to sell it a la carte inside the regular free YouTube app via its new "Primetime Channels" subscription platform (which currently offers Showtime, Starz, Paramount+, etc., very much like Prime Video Channels and Apple TV Channels).<br />
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I've said before that I don't see how NFLST, at the inflated price the NFL wanted, made sense for anybody. And sure enough, analysts are saying that the deal will likely be a money-loser for Google. Here's a new analysis claiming that <b>Google will need 4.5 million subs</b> to NFLST just to break even. That's well over twice the peak sub number of 2 million that DTV attracted to the package.<br />
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<a href="https://www.lightreading.com/videomedia/youtube-needs-45m-subs-to-break-even-on-nfl-sunday-ticket---analyst-/a/d-id/782588?" target="_blank" class="link link--external link--favicon link--favicon--before" style="background-image:url('https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=www.lightreading.com');" rel="nofollow ugc noopener">https://www.lightreading.com/videom...n-nfl-sunday-ticket---analyst-/a/d-id/782588?</a> <br />
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I can certainly see Google getting more subs than DTV has gotten, given that they'll sell it as a standalone thing that isn't tied to a full cable TV package with a professionally-installed rooftop dish and two-year contract. But can they get over 2x the number of subs that DTV got, given that they'll apparently have to keep the premium pricing, i.e. about $300 a pop? Seems unlikely to me.<br />
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But hand it to the NFL, the cachet of their product has apparently helped them find another sucker for the next seven years. If I was an Alphabet shareholder, I wouldn't be too pleased.</div>
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