A Sunday Ticket broadcast can look very different depending on which screen you’re watching. One bar owner said they had 41 TVs wired through coax and tried EverPass, only to find the screens could fall out of sync. Guests could be cheering on one TV while another hadn’t shown the play yet. One operator was looking at a $4,000 network upgrade for a 10-TV bar. But no, this is not about technical issues or the costs that businesses bore for modern sports streaming. 

While some businesses did spend thousands of dollars on new hardware, networking, and installation, others held back, hoping the situation might change. And then, before the 2026 season even began, it did: EverPass and DirecTV announced a new multi-year agreement that put DirecTV back in the commercial Sunday Ticket business. Still, there’s nothing to be happy about here. 

As Awful Announcing reported, operators are weighing whether to challenge EverPass over the money they spent preparing for a system they were told would be the only way to carry Sunday Ticket in 2026.

Getting DirecTV back does not make the problem disappear. Consider the whiplash that so many business owners faced over the months, and you will know why:

The choice was never simply between satellite and streaming. For some operators, it became a choice between spending now on EverPass or risking a season without a package they consider essential to their business. That is where the switch begins to look like more than a failed technology rollout.

EverPass had spent the spring telling commercial customers that DirecTV was out and that it was the only authorized commercial distributor of Sunday Ticket for 2026. Its May response to one frustrated owner was unequivocal: “There are no active discussions between EverPass and DIRECTV regarding NFL Sunday Ticket.” 

Yet on July 31, EverPass and DirecTV announced a new multi-year agreement, with DirecTV returning as EverPass’ sales, marketing and commercial distribution partner for Sunday Ticket and other content.

For the owners who had already acted, it was a reversal after the spending had already happened. Dan Weissman, who oversees more than 100 TVs at Casino M8trix in San Jose, said his system had been built around modern content distribution before EverPass arrived with its mandate. His objection was not that he hated streaming; it was that he felt he was being pushed into rebuilding a system that already worked. “We built a system that was designed around modern content distribution. This is going backwards,” he said. 

Furthermore, the costs were not theoretical. One operator said he had been quoted about $8,000 for Sunday Ticket and another $10,000 for the network work needed to support the EverPass setup. Another bar owner said his business spent more than $10,000 reworking its video distribution around EverPass hardware, including new equipment, wiring and changes to how games were routed to screens. A separate owner weighing the switch described needing as many as 10 devices for a 41-TV setup and questioned whether the investment would produce enough return. Then there were the operators who refused to make the bet altogether.

 Anthony Barone, who runs a bar in Clifton, New Jersey, had warned EverPass that streaming created problems that satellite did not, particularly around internet reliability and the delay between a play happening and appearing on a screen. He held off on the transition, believing the system would face enough resistance once the season began that EverPass might eventually have to reverse course. Instead, the reversal came before the preseason. For Barone, the stakes were not abstract either. 

Before the July 31 agreement, he had warned his staff that their pay could take a hit in the fall if the bar did not have Sunday Ticket, which he expected to have by Week 1. That is why the package carries weight for commercial customers: For a bar built around football Sundays, losing access can mean fewer customers, fewer shifts and less revenue. The technical concerns were also serious enough to reach Capitol Hill. 

At a June 10 House Judiciary Committee hearing, commercial operators raised concerns about the cost and reliability of replacing DirecTV’s established satellite infrastructure with streaming. 

That pressure helps explain why the July agreement was significant, but it does not establish that EverPass’s streaming strategy simply failed. EverPass, however, has framed the new arrangement as an expansion of choice. 

CEO Alex Kaplan said the agreement would give commercial businesses “flexibility in how they receive the service.” The new deal allows Sunday Ticket to reach venues through both satellite and streaming, while DirecTV becomes EverPass’ preferred national distributor. The distinction is important.

 EverPass did not give the commercial rights back to DirecTV. EverPass remains the rights holder and platform, while DirecTV is again handling sales, marketing and distribution. The agreement also extends beyond Sunday Ticket to EverPass’ other commercial sports offerings. But that explanation does little to settle the complaint from the businesses that moved early. 

Weissman put the frustration that so many business owners may be facing more bluntly in his letter to EverPass: “We absorbed the cost, the disruption, and the operational risk, only to learn that the mandate was never really a mandate.” He went further, accusing EverPass of using the transition to push its own commercial platform at the expense of the businesses buying it. “It was a bluff to try to reap all the licensing fees for yourself, and our money was the collateral,” Weissman wrote.

 EverPass has not publicly accepted that characterization; its position has been that the industry is moving toward streaming and that the new deal simply gives businesses another way to access its content.

The broader NFL Sunday Ticket story only adds to the tension. The commercial package is separate from the residential product, which moved to YouTube in 2023, when the NFL created EverPass with RedBird Capital to handle distribution to bars, restaurants, hotels and other venues. DirecTV remained a non-exclusive commercial distribution partner under a three-year agreement, but that deal expired this offseason, setting up the March confrontation.

There is also a legal backdrop that makes the anger around Sunday Ticket more consequential. The NFL is already fighting a separate antitrust case over the way Sunday Ticket was distributed and priced, with an appeal pending after a federal judge overturned the $4.7 billion jury verdict against the league. That litigation involves the broader Sunday Ticket business and should not be confused with the complaints now emerging from commercial customers over EverPass’ 2026 transition.

For the bar owners now threatening to take the fight further, however, the argument is much simpler. DirecTV may be back, but for the businesses that already paid the price of getting ready for its departure, the damage is not necessarily reversed.