DirecTV, get your act together

The DirecTV era of NFL Sunday Ticket is going out with a whimper.

This is the last season in which the satellite TV company will hold the exclusive rights to the NFL’s premiere package. So far, DirecTV’s final season is leaving an indelible mark for all of the wrong reasons. The product did not work properly in Week 1 or Week 2.

While DirecTV is known as a satellite dish company, it’s no longer necessary to make one of those appointments and wait hours for a technician to arrive to install the dish. The company now offers its product as a streaming service, a la YouTube TV. Of course Sunday Ticket still is quite the expensive add-on, and the streaming customers are not getting their money’s worth.

A scroll through Twitter on Sundays at the start of this NFL season would have revealed numerous complaints with DirecTV’s handle tagged. Sunday Ticket either hasn’t worked at all for quite a few streaming customers, or functioned very poorly. The company has issued an apology and promised to compensate customers who have been inconvenienced.

Early in Week 3, it appears that DirecTV’s streaming department still needs some work. Once again social media is buzzing with criticism. Yet another Sunday of Americans far and wide is being ruined.

Beginning in 2023, one of the heavyweights in the streaming wars will host Sunday Ticket. So far, the front runner is Apple. With Ted Lasso, Severance, The Morning Show, and Sunday Ticket, Apple is giving Amazon everything it can handle in its quest for world domination.

It’s been a helluva run for DirecTV since 1994 with Sunday Ticket, but just like all traditional television providers, technology is passing them by. That being said, the company should go out better than this. Their featured product is Sunday Ticket and in this final season, they’ve done such a poor job that they’ve repeatedly gone viral.

Show some pride, DirecTV! Leave the people with a good feeling on the way out. Don’t finish like Ben Roethlisberger with the public excited to see you go away. It’s been almost 30 years. Don’t you all want people reminiscing about your legendary exit the way that they do John Elway? Think about your legacy.. This is your last chance.

Also, save the future of your company. Offering your product as a streaming service is a good idea. I don’t have to get anything hooked up in the house and I can get a basic live television package for $49.99/month. It would be a tempting offer, if not for the fact that the product has been trashed on social media for most of September.

Get it together. There are only 17 Sundays per year of regular-season NFL football. For most sports fans in this country, it’s like having Christmas once per week for a third of the year. Don’t be that guy that ruins Christmas for the whole family. Look out for the people, and do something that can help your company have a future in this new scattered world of television.