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1 in 5 US households are cutting the cord. That's a shitload of viewers.
To me, it is an absolutely obsolete model to be reliant on DirecTV to push your out-of-market TV viewership. It made sense 5-10 years ago when everybody wanted cable. It doesn't make sense in today's world. You have customers who would pay a shitload of money to stream games on their computer, and you're denying them that unless they pay for a clunky dish and an expensive monthly cable charge, for a service they only need 3 months out of the year.
And DirecTV is desperate to cling on because they know that lots of subscribers keep their dish only because of Sunday Ticket. So DirecTV will never be open to opening up their streaming services to non-dish subscribers in a meaningful way.
Case-in-point... Thursday NFL games that are available to all markets on cable AND DirecTV... 2 million viewers on Twitter. Imagine what that viewership would look like if that service was offered to all games, especially games where a lot of viewership is out-of-market and can't get through network TV. The fact that Goodell gave Twitter a great deal even though they underbid speaks volumes.... They know the importance of streaming TV and I bet the NFL is secretly wishing they could get out of this DirecTV deal.
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