AT&T Raises Possibility of Offering NFL Sunday Ticket to Wireless Customers

AT&T is floating the possibility of offering DirecTV's National Football League Sunday Ticket programming to all its wireless phone customers, as the phone giant seeks to convince Wall Street of the strategic value of its $49 billion planned acquisition of the satellite TV firm. AT&T management highlighted Sunday Ticket as a cornerstone of future product-bundle offerings it can market to its customers.

AT&T executives even suggested it could exempt streaming of NFL games from counting toward subscribers' data limits. Any move by AT&T to extend the NFL offering to its customers would put it on a collision course with its biggest rival, Verizon Communications, which already has the exclusive smartphone streaming rights to football games for Sunday, Monday and Thursday nights. Verizon also can show Sunday afternoon games from customers' home markets on Verizon Wireless phones.