Short answers, pulled from the story.
NFL Sunday Ticket is an out-of-market sports package that broadcasts NFL regular season games unavailable on a viewer's local affiliates. It carries all regional Sunday afternoon games produced by Fox and CBS, and is marketed to fans who live outside their team's home market and to sports bars.
NFL Sunday Ticket was largely invented by entrepreneur Jon Taffer during his three-year term on the board of NFL Enterprises, working alongside NFL Chief of Marketing Michael Miller. The package launched on the 4th of September 1994.
DirecTV held exclusive U.S. rights to NFL Sunday Ticket from 1994 through the end of the 2022 NFL season, nearly three decades. DirecTV extended its contract beyond 2014 by paying the NFL $1.5 billion per year for eight years.
DirecTV and its majority owner AT&T publicly questioned the value of the package, having fewer than half the subscribers needed to break even. The NFL announced on the 22nd of December 2022 that Sunday Ticket would move exclusively to YouTube TV and YouTube's Primetime Channels service beginning with the 2023 season.
A Los Angeles jury found on the 27th of June 2024 that the NFL violated antitrust law and ordered a penalty of more than $4.7 billion, with potential treble damages reaching $14.39 billion. On the 1st of August 2024, Judge Philip Gutierrez overturned the verdict, ruling that expert testimony used flawed methodologies and that no reasonable jury could have found class-wide injury.
EverPass Media is a company formed by the NFL in partnership with RedBird Capital, announced on the 28th of March 2023, to distribute NFL Sunday Ticket to commercial venues such as bars, restaurants, and casinos. It reached its first agreement with DirecTV on the 25th of May 2023 to sell the package to DirecTV's existing business customers.