NFL closing on on new regular season package with YouTube

Sign with logos for Google and the Google owned video streaming service YouTube at the Googleplex, the Silicon Valley headquarters of search engine and technology company Google Inc in Mountain View, California, April 14, 2018. (Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images) | Getty Images

In a follow-up to a story earlier in the week, the NFL’s newly created regular season package appears to have a leading candidate.

Front Office Sports reported on Thursday that YouTube is in advanced discussions to land five regular season games, beating out competitors Netflix and Fox Sports. While it’s not known what that five-game package would consist of, the expectation is that the NFL’s debut in Australia when the San Francisco 49ers and Los Angeles Rams play in Week 1 would be one of those matchups.

As part of ESPN’s acquisition of NFL Network, they gave back their extra inventory of Monday Night Football games used for doubleheaders, which have since been nixed. Those games have been effectively re-packaged by the NFL for sale to another network or streaming service, of which YouTube obviously falls under the latter.

The NFL’s first YouTube broadcast came last season, when the Los Angeles Chargers defeated the Kansas City Chiefs in Week 1 down in Brazil. There’s already an established partnership between the league and the YouTube TV subscription service, which is home to NFL Sunday Ticket as of 2023.

Assuming that these games would be streamed free like Chargers-Chiefs was last year, it’d be a hell of a lot better an option than the Netflix paywall.

We should see a resolution on this soon given the schedule release is next month. Maybe the Seattle Seahawks will find themselves playing a regular season game on YouTube this season.