YouTube Quietly Drops Free Trial For NFL Sunday Ticket

By Phillip Swann
The TV Answer Man – @tvanswerman

TV Answer Man, I was trying to do the free trial for the Sunday Ticket today and I couldn’t find an option for it on the site. Do you know how to do this? — Marshall, Washington, D.C.
Marshall, Google, which has the Sunday Ticket rights this season after it was an exclusive on DIRECTV for 28 seasons, began offering a free seven-day trial for the package in early September. However, the company has quietly ended the free trial offer. After some prospective customers attempted to sign up for the free offer today but were unable to do so at the YouTube Sunday Ticket site, they asked YouTube’s X customer service team for help. The customer service team responded: “We’re no longer offering NFL Sunday Ticket 7-day free trials. more here: https://goo.gle/3RTxqlt. We’ll let you know if this changes in the future.”

DIRECTV last season provided a free preview of the first week of the Sunday Ticket to satellite customers, and a one-week free trial for the entire season to its streaming customers. It’s unknown why Google has decided to end the free trial with 12 weeks left in the season after today. The company has not issued any announcement regarding the change other than the response to customers on social media. Google is charging a base price of $349 and $449 for the Sunday Ticket on YouTube TV and YouTube Primetime Channels respectively and the first season’s subscriber totals have been good but not overwhelming, according to one estimate.

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— Phillip Swann