After Google's $2 billion-a-year deal to make NFL Sunday Ticket a YouTube TV exclusive, Google has now announced exactly how much football addicts will be paying to get every out-of-market NFL game, every week. The short answer is to not expect any revolutionary pricing packages or offerings just because this is moving online.

Sunday Ticket used to be a major sports package on DirecTV, giving people access to around 13 NFL games per week. Between your Sunday Ticket subscription and a normal cable subscription, it's possible to see every NFL game, every week. The new home of the service, YouTube TV, isn't regular YouTube; it's more like cable TV channel bundles—but over the Internet. Instead of getting the usual pile of cable TV channels (CNN, ESPN, MTV, etc.) from Comcast, Spectrum, or whoever your local monopoly is, you can get it from YouTube instead, over the Internet, usually for the same price. Currently, YouTube TV costs $72.99 per month, just like a cable TV subscription.

Google has two sets of prices for Sunday Ticket—one for people currently paying the base $72.99 a month fee for YouTube TV and another price for non-subscribers. For subscribers already paying the hefty YouTube TV monthly fee, Sunday Ticket is $349 per season. This is more than it cost on DirecTV, where the price was $300 per season plus the base rate for a monthly DirecTV subscription, which is around $65. If you don't want to pay for YouTube TV's cable channels, you can subscribe to Sunday Ticket through "YouTube Primetime Channels," where the cost is $100 more or a flat $449 fee for the entire season.

Google's blog post says: "On YouTube TV, members will have access to features like the brand new multiview as well as unlimited DVR storage," so it sounds like the standalone "Primetime Channels" package won't have DVR support, while YouTube TV subscribers will, which is a major differentiator.

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There's also the matter of NFL Red Zone, an indulgent seven-hour, commercial-free live highlight show that runs every Sunday and whisks you around from game to game as interesting things happen. As usual, Red Zone costs extra on top of the Sunday Ticket package. For every package, RedZone is $40 more for the entire season. YouTube TV will distribute the NFL Network-produced version of RedZone with host Scott Hansen. DirecTV's in-house production originated the live highlight show idea with the "Red Zone Channel," which the NFL copied, so there have been two rival "Red Zones" for a while now. The DirecTV product is being shut down with the loss of Sunday Ticket, which is good since the NFL Network version is generally considered superior.

The other DirecTV-produced content, like "Short Cuts"—entire games edited down to around an hour to show only the plays—and the DirecTV Fantasy Zone, will have no equivalents on YouTube. DirecTV's Game Mix channels would show eight games at once in a split-screen format with live scores, and while that also won't be replicated on YouTube TV, YouTube just launched a four-game "Multiview" feature. Google also says it's working on "adding shopping integrations so viewers can easily buy merchandise to support their teams, and social features that YouTube users are already familiar with, like chat, polls, and more."

Google is offering an early bird plan. If you sign up before June 6, you'll get $100 off the first season. There is no longer a student discount. Google says you can sign up in the YouTube TV app, with the option beginning to roll out to some people today.

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There's no 4K add-on because weekly NFL games are only produced and broadcast in 720p! That is not a typo, and yes, this is still true in 2023. For the really important games, like the Super Bowl, the NFL's partners will break out the "good" cameras and film the game in 1080p. (Not that I'm bitter.) You get two simultaneous Sunday Ticket streams on any device you want. The 4K add-on usually gives you extra simultaneous streams, but that does not apply to Sunday Ticket.

Sunday Ticket offers "out of market" regular season NFL games, which means you won't get the Sunday games that are being broadcast on your local FOX and CBS channels (you're expected to just watch them on the local channels), along with the primetime games like Sunday Night Football (available on your NBC local station), Monday Night Football (on ESPN), and Thursday Night Football (on Amazon Prime Video). With those games excluded from the package, you'll usually get around 13 NFL games per week on Sunday Ticket. Sunday Ticket is the go-to option for fantasy football addicts or fans of a non-local team.

Sunday Ticket is a bit more expensive than what DirecTV was asking, but prices here mostly keep the status quo going, which should not be a surprise. Google's YouTube TV strategy is to take the cable TV model and replicate it exactly on the Internet, usually with no cost savings over traditional cable. Instead of having a cable TV bill that's $100-plus and comes with tons of bundled channels you don't want, you can get a YouTube TV bill that's $100-plus and comes with tons of bundled channels you don't want. Second, it has been reported that the NFL's contracts with CBS and FOX forbid the NFL from lowering the price of Sunday Ticket because that would devalue the local games.

The dream is a Sunday Ticket package with à la carte options, where you can subscribe to a single team or just the RedZone channel, but none of that is happening. It would probably go against the terms of contracts the NFL has already signed with other partners.