Mike Florio ,
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Officially, the Sunday Ticket package begins with Week 1 of the regular season. Unofficially, it began during the preseason.
Via David Rumsey of FrontOfficeSports.com, the Sunday Ticket package has made multiple preseason games available on the Sunday Ticket service.
Apparently, the NFL has allowed YouTube and YouTube TV to stream several preseason games each year, since YouTube acquired the package from DirecTV in 2023. The purpose, per the report, is to test the service in advance of the regular season. The preseason games have not been promoted.
This year, Sunday Ticket streamed Dolphins-Lions in Week 2 of the preseason. Some users also had access to Patriots-Vikings last Saturday.
On Saturday, Texans-Lions is scheduled to be streamed by Sunday Ticket in “several markets.”
Neither the NFL nor YouTube provided a comment for the story.
A separate test for YouTube will happen two weeks from tonight, when the service streams the Week 1 Chiefs-Chargers game from Brazil. Given that the game is available at no charge, it will likely be the most-streamed NFL game to date.
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