YouTube exec says streamer could one day put sports events ‘behind a subscription’

When the NFL aired a game globally on YouTube this past season, it was a historic moment.

For the first time, one of the biggest sports leagues in the world was making a game available online, free to all. The game drew a per-minute average of just under 20 million viewers.

In addition, YouTube has recently boasted that its subscription numbers for NFL Sunday Ticket are higher than they ever were on DirecTV. YouTube also runs its own subscription service, YouTube Premium, which allows for ad-free viewing and more for those who pay.

In a conversation on the Marchand Sports Media podcast this week, YouTube vice president of subscriptions Christian Oestlien explained that YouTube has been intentional about building up subscription products — with an eye toward potentially paywalling certain live sports events in the future, depending on the league partner’s goals.

“We’ll come up with a nice mix, I think, of opportunities to present games that are free; some things we might put behind a subscription, others might be a mix of the two,” Oestlien said.

“I think there’s a lot of flexibility there from a business-model standpoint. A lot of that is actually working with our partners to see what their priorities are. Monetization is really important, but I think one of the things that leagues are concerned about and hopefully see an opportunity in YouTube is we can really deliver that reach.”

YouTube users watch billions of videos per day on the platform. The YouTube TV live-television product is in more than 10 million homes. The platform certainly has significant reach.

But YouTube, like its top streaming competitors Amazon Prime Video and Netflix, are in a race to build one-stop-shop platforms for streaming video. While one-off NFL games (or a larger package of games, which could come soon) may air free on YouTube, other products may necessitate a paywall.

For instance, Oestlien made no secret of YouTube’s interest in the rights to local, in-market packages from the NBA, NHL, or MLB. As we’ve seen with ESPN’s ingestion of the MLB.tv service or Prime Video’s offering of NBA League Pass, these services often sit behind multiple paywalls.