NFL Unveils Broadcast Ambitions with 2023 Schedule
The first NFL game is held the Friday after Thanksgiving. The ability for TV networks to switch games. A franchise that plays two international games in one season. Teams that reluctantly have to play two Thursday night football games in one season.
Those are some of the big changes in the NFL’s schedule for 2023, the first among the league’s new media rights contracts. The deals, signed in 2021, are worth a combined $110 billion and take effect this season with games airing on CBS, NBC, Fox, ESPN and Amazon Prime Video. The NFL also signed a seven-year deal with YouTube in December for the rights to stream out-of-market games for a whopping $2.5 billion a year.
“It’s a content provider for media in every way,” Daniel Durbin, a communications professor at the University of Southern California, said of the NFL. to serve that purpose over players, fans, coaches and even teams.
The league released its full schedule of matches in a televised broadcast on Thursday night, but it leaked some matchups in the days leading up to the official unveiling. Over the past decade, both NFL Network and ESPN have broadcast the reveal of the schedule in prime time as the league has successfully transitioned off-season events such as the draft and scouting into TV goggles.
On Thursday morning, the NFL announced the regular season opener, scheduled for September 7, a Thursday: a game between the Kansas City Chiefs, the reigning Super Bowl champions and the Detroit Lions, who have won eight of their last 10 games in 2022. Although four Lions players, including receiver Jameson Williams, were suspended last month for violating the NFL’s betting policy, the Lions are expected to battle for a playoff spot in the NFC
The Jets were among the teams that placed a marquee on social media on Wednesday, honoring the announcement that the team would host the Black Friday game against the Miami Dolphins on November 24. The game will be streamed on Amazon, which began broadcasting Thursday night games last year.
The Jets, behind their new quarterback, Aaron Rodgers, will take on their old AFC East rival on what is traditionally one of the biggest shopping days of the year, marking the NFL’s first game on the day.
Rodgers’ first game for the Jets is a “Monday Night Football” game against the Buffalo Bills in Week 1. It is one of five prime-time games for the Jets in 2023, after the team only played in one game last season.
Last season, the NFL aired three games on Christmas Day for the first time, which fell on a Sunday, directly challenging the NBA stronghold in that holiday’s TV lineup. With Christmas falling on a Monday this year, professional football has once again packed the schedule with three strong matches that should draw viewers.
Kansas City will play the Las Vegas Raiders before the Giants take on the reigning NFC champions, the Philadelphia Eagles, in a rematch of last season’s divisional playoff round. The San Francisco 49ers will host the Baltimore Ravens in the evening game.
The NFL continues the decades-long tradition of the Lions and Dallas Cowboys hosting games on Thanksgiving. The Lions take on the Green Bay Packers and the Cowboys play the Washington Commanders. The Seattle Seahawks will host the 49ers in the evening game.
In another change brought about by the new media deals, the NFL will have more freedom to repost games on different networks and change tee times more flexibly. Under the old media rights deals, Fox aired the most NFC road games and CBS aired the most AFC road games, but this season the N.FL. can post a game on any network, regardless of the conference.
Where previously “Monday Night Football” games were locked in at the start of the season, ABC and ESPN can now ask the league to move a Sunday game to Monday if there’s a more engaging game than scheduled. Such a move can only be made between weeks 12 and 17 of the 18-week regular season.
Three teams — the Pittsburgh Steelers, Chicago Bears and New Orleans Saints — will also play more than one Thursday night game this season, except for Thanksgiving, a change that has left some players confused. Patrick Mahomes, last season’s most valuable player and one of the most popular NFL athletes, expressed his displeasure in a social media post in March.
In the past, players and coaches have disliked Thursday night play due to the short lead time between Sunday games and matchups that take place four days later. Fans and even Al Michaels, Amazon’s leading broadcaster, have complained about the poor quality of Thursday’s matches.
“There is no one in our organization who doesn’t put our fans first,” Commissioner Roger Goodell said in March. “It is clear what we are doing to provide the best match-ups for our fans. That is part of what our planning has always focused on.”
The NFL will play five international games, continuing the league’s expansion efforts overseas. Last season, it added a regular season game for the first time in Germany, and it returns with two games in 2023, when Miami faces Kansas City on November 5 and the Indianapolis Colts challenge the New England Patriots on November 12.
The Jacksonville Jaguars, who have played in London nearly every year since 2012, become the first NFL team to play two international games in one season. The team’s owner, Shahid Khan, also owns Premier League team Fulham FC, and the Jaguars will use the soccer club’s training facility between playing the Atlanta Falcons on October 1 and facing the Bills on October 8 .