The 2020 NFL season marked the first time in 11 years that there was a Friday game on the regular-season schedule and although the league has been hesitant to schedule Friday games, there soon could be an annual one added to the schedule.
During a recent interview with Peter King of NBC Sports, Patriots owner Robert Kraft threw out the possibility that the NFL might soon start scheduling a game on Black Friday. If that game were to happen, it would be streamed by Amazon, which will be taking over the "Thursday Night Football" package in 2023.
"Amazon wanted more from us, and they'll dedicate tremendous resources to make this work for them and for us," Kraft said of the partnership with the tech giant. "Who knows? Maybe we'll play a game on Black Friday, their biggest shopping day of the year."
Although Kraft didn't sound completely sure that the game would happen, it appears that a Black Friday game is actually written into Amazon's new contract with the NFL. According to Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated, the league has the option to give Amazon a Black Friday game, which means it will be up to the NFL whether Amazon gets the game. The option was built into the contract as a favor to Amazon, who won't get to televise a Thursday game during Thanksgiving week. Although the tech company will get to exclusively stream Thursday night games starting in 2023, that won't include the three games on Turkey Day, which will air on CBS, Fox and NBC.
With Amazon being the odd man out on Thanksgiving, that left them without a game that week, so giving the company a potential Black Friday game became an option. Although a Black Friday game might not sound like a great idea -- because everyone is out shopping and not watching television -- the fact of the matter is that Black Friday is one of Amazon's biggest days of the year and if millions of people are on Amazon's website, there's a good chance they'll stop to watch a few minutes of the game.
Under normal circumstances, Friday has been the one day of the week that the NFL has generally tried to avoid. Under the broadcast antitrust exemption, the league isn't supposed to televise any games on Fridays or Saturdays from Labor Day weekend through early December. It's unclear how the NFL would get around this, but Amazon might be an exception to the rule since the game would technically be streaming (and not televised).
Since 1970, the NFL has only played a total of 11 Friday games. Although the Vikings and Saints played one on Christmas in 2020, the last one before that came in 2009 (There have only been four Friday games this century).
If the NFL does move forward with a Friday game, it wouldn't happen until 2023 as part of the new television deal. If you want read about 10 more big changes that could be coming when the new TV deal kicks in, be sure to click here.
https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/nfl-could-soon-be-adding-an-annual-black-friday-game-to-the-regular-season-schedule/
2021-03-25 20:24:33Z
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