NFL’s new deal with DirecTV is worth $1.5 billion per year

The NFL, everyone’s favorite plucky charitable not-for-profit business, isn’t taking the “Sunday Ticket” package anywhere but DirecTV for a long time.

DirecTV and the NFL agreed to a new eight-year deal, at a total cost of $12 billion. Yes, $1.5 billion per season to the NFL. That’s according to Darren Rovell of ESPN.

This agreement also comes after one of the NFL’s worst months off the field, in terms of controversy. But even though the Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson stories were negative headlines for the league, television ratings still continued to improve. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that DirecTV invested big with the NFL again. The league is still as popular as ever, it seems.

DirecTV’s old deal with the NFL was slated to end after this season and was worth $1 billion per year, according to Sports Business Journal. Every company in America wishes it could get a 50 percent bump in pay from its partners. That’s why the worry about the NFL’s incredible popularity being in trouble because of the recent off-field issues has very little basis in reality, at least not yet. 

“Sunday Ticket” has been a huge boon to the satellite provider DirecTV as well. It allows subscribers to watch whatever NFL game they wish, even if it’s not on in their local market. That package turned out to be a genius idea. And from the ratings and DirecTV’s huge investment in the NFL, it seems like everyone figures that people are going to keep watching the NFL in record numbers for many years to come.

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Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @YahooSchwab