More than eight months after the launch of DirecTV Now, parent company AT&T announced Monday it would begin to roll out CBS Networks on the growing internet-based television service and provide more sports for cord-cutters using it.
CBS had been a glaring omission for DirecTV Now, and it brings to viewers the NFL on CBS — including Super Bowl LIII in 2019 — the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, SEC football, The Masters along with college football on CBS Sports Network and sports content on Showtime. CBS Sports Network is available on the “Go Big” package, and Showtime can be added for $8 a month.
“This is another key milestone in bringing DIRECTV NOW users access to their favorite entertainment, news and sports from all of the major broadcast networks,” Daniel York, senior executive vice president and chief content officer of AT&T Entertainment Group, said in a statement. “As we add more live national and local channels, we know even more people will choose DIRECTV NOW as their go-to streaming service.”
But what about NFL SUNDAY TICKET, which enables DirecTV customers to watch and stream live out-of-market NFL games on Sunday afternoons? With the season approaching, there has been no word on if this will be available on DirecTV Now.
“It’s a good question, but nothing to announce today, respectfully,” AT&T chief financial officer John Stephens said on an earnings call last month.
As of July, DirecTV Now had nearly 500,000 subscribers. That included the addition of 152,000 subscribers over the past quarter after AT&T had made the service available for $10 per month if bundled with AT&T unlimited data plans. Those gains helped offset the decline seen in traditional TV subscribers, as AT&T lost195,000 U-verse customers and 156,000 DirecTV subscribers in the same quarter
“Half of our DTV NOW subscribers are coming from traditional pay-TV, mainly from our competitors, and the other half had no pay-TV service at all,” Stephens said.
The growth in DirecTV Now came after the service had drew the ire of customers who were plagued by sports-related errors and outages early on after the Nov. 30 launch.
“It’s pretty dramatic growth, particularly when we gave a couple, three months rest there while we tested the platform and really put it through performance testing,” Stephens said. “So I think there’s clearly a demand for it, an opportunity for it and for us that allows us to get to a lot of customers we don’t normally serve today.”