With the college football season recently starting and the NFL season kicking off Thursday night, it’s arguably the best time of year for a sports fan. One of the greatest things the NFL has to offer is the NFL Sunday Ticket. By subscribing to the YouTube TV service, fans get the ability to watch every NFL game on Sunday afternoons, with no commercials, frequent updates and the ability to have up to four games on their television. The service is currently going for a rate of $479 per year.
College football’s popularity has significantly grown over recent memory. Which begs the question: Why hasn’t the NCAA followed suit and set up a service for fans to watch multiple different games at once?
The primary argument has to be regarding the television networks and streaming services that present college football. On Sunday afternoons, the NFL is presented by FOX and CBS. For college football, FOX and CBS have coverage, but so does Peacock, NBC, truTV and ESPN, which presents the majority of the college games on ESPN+, SEC network, ACC network and Big XII network.
Another argument could be the amount of games being played at once and times they are played. At most, the NFL would have 13 games on a Sunday afternoon, from 1 p.m. to about 7:30 p.m. There can be up to about 70 games played on a Saturday with start times running from noon to potentially 11:59 p.m. kickoffs.
The last of the main arguments could be the target demographic. Not to say that a college football version of the Sunday Ticket wouldn’t draw in adult crowds, it’s most likely that the target demographic would be college students. A cost of nearly $500 is very hefty for a college student to put out for a 16-week college regular season.
I believe that it could be possible for a “Saturday Ticket” to be achieved, whether it was YouTube TV or another streaming service. While there would be more networks that would need to be convinced to be included than the NFL, it is still obtainable to get them to agree to terms that would benefit them financially, while also giving the fans what they want. Though there are more games being played, they could allow fans to watch more than four games. As for the cost for the target demographic, as many other streaming services allow, giving a student discount could incentivise college students to purchase the service.
It is probably a long shot for this to come to fruition, but I wouldn’t be surprised if many college students shared a similar desire for a service like this.
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