You go to watch your favorite team on Week 1 of the NFL season and you can’t find them on the normal streaming service of DirecTV. Soon you realize there has been a huge change to the way NFL fans watch football and you have to find a way to pay to get to watch your favorite team.

2023 represented a change to the way that many people watched football. Sunday Ticket is a streaming service that allows football fans to watch multiple games at the same time. They are also able to get access to games that are not in their local area and replay games whenever they choose. This year Sunday Ticket moved from its spot on DirecTV (where it had been for more than 10 years) to the streaming service of YouTubeTV. According to NPR, the reason for the change was that online streaming services continue to become more popular as many are cutting their cable lines. The change in steaming services also brought along a change in pricing which gathered mixed reviews from many. According to Variety, in 2022 Sunday Ticket had been $294 for fans. The feature of customers being able to bundle their Sunday ticket plan with NFL Red Zone (A streaming service that lets customers see teams only when they are close to scoring a touchdown) will still be around this year. 

Here is a graph of how much it will costs for customers depending on when they buy their plan and what plan they chose:

According to PC Magazine, many fans have decided to buy Sunday Ticket because unless you are a fan of the Jets,Giants, or even the Eagles, you most likely won’t be able to watch your favorite team each week.Junior Jayden Gomez, who is a Sunday Ticket subscriber said that It is very overpriced. “The only thing that is really better is the red zone figure,” he said.  Some Eagles games can be steamed locally but not all, because in Monmouth County we are closer to New York television coverage than Philadelphia. Besides Eagles fans, some common fans here at MRHS are Chiefs and Cowboys fans. Both would have to get Sunday Ticket to watch all of their team’s games. 

To sum it up, many students here, like Caesar Bautista ‘24, say “maybe next year” because of the high price. Only time will tell if after this season YouTubeTV will lower their prices to adjust to more fans' budgets.