The NFL is gold when it comes to television ratings. People absolutely love their football — they can’t get enough of it.
They’ll eat it all up, whether it’s training camp, preseason rankings, or playoff games. So when it comes to the NFL as an organization, more is always better. That’s why the calendar has NFL football in some capacity, essentially, all year long.
Now, it’s looking to add even more, according to a new report from the Sports Business Journal. The NFL is reportedly going to add a Black Friday game to its Thursday Night Football schedule in 2023, per SBJ’s John Ourand.
The league already dominates Thanksgiving weekend with 3 different games on the holiday. They’d be looking to add an extra one here to strengthen that already tight grip.
Sounds like a lot, right? Let’s unpack this a bit.
So the NFL wants to add a Black Friday game?
Yes. Again, they’re here to tighten their already firm grip on the week. Thanksgiving is obviously a staple for NFL football in most households and, now, they’ll try to add an extra game in there for good measure.
The groundwork was laid for this to happen earlier this year when the league’s owners approved a resolution allowing the NFL to schedule two more teams to play short-week games, NBC Sports’ Peter King wrote in April.
The league discussed this before, but it didn’t become a reality until that moment.
Why is this happening all of a sudden?
It’s all because of the NFL’s new deal with Amazon Prime. The online retail behemoth is the new owner of the rights to Thursday Night Football.
This is something Amazon has apparently pushed hard for, Peter King wrote back in April. They’re willing to shell out $70 to $100 million for this single game on top of the $1 billion they already dropped for the rights to TNF.
“Amazon has made a huge bid for the game. I’m told it’s between $70 million and $100 million for a Black Friday game, which would be added to the current package. (That’s in the same neighborhood of what network partners have paid for wild-card playoff games recently.) Seems like a win-win.”
That’s a whole lot of money. But to Amazon, it’s probably worth it.
Sheesh. Why is this so valuable to Amazon?
The reasoning is simple. Black Friday might be the busiest shopping day of the year. On top of that, most people are shopping online these days.
So let’s just piece this puzzle together really quick. You take the largest e-commerce platform out there in Amazon and you give it the right to stream the only TV product in America that seems impervious to everyone going cordless. Ratings are still through the roof for the NFL.
On top of that, you add a game on what might be the biggest shopping day of the year. So you’re encouraging people to stay inside and further eschew the task of shopping at brick-and-mortar stores.
Then, you throw in the fact that Amazon can allow users to interactively shop during their live-streamed events thanks to their Twitch acquisition. This is just going to be a flat-out moneymaker for Amazon.
Meanwhile, the NFL gets an extra $100 million just for shifting the schedule around to create another early game. That’s a win-win for everyone — except the players, of course, who have been calling for an end to Thursday Night Football for years.
But the math says it’s not going anywhere for a long, long time.
Alright, so when is this happening?
It could happen as soon as the 2023 NFL season, Ourand writes, but there’s also a possibility that it might be pushed back a year.
“Those concerns have been addressed and the league is moving forward with plans to hold a Black Friday game in 2023. It’s possible that the league will wait until 2024 to schedule that first game, but all signs point to 2023 for the first one.”
We’ll see when word officially comes down. In the meantime, just be on the lookout. This won’t be the last time we see this discussed.
