Amazon takes over the NFL’s Thursday Night Football package in 2022, and is set to take on a very appropriate holiday weekend game as early as 2023. According to Sports Business Journal, the league’s new media partner will likely broadcast a game on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving which is also a massive shopping day for retailers like Amazon.
The Black Friday game, which comes a day after the NFL’s traditional three-game Thanksgiving lineup, will most likely begin in 2023 but could be pushed to ’24, according to the report.
The move was hinted at by ProFootballTalk‘s Peter King in April when he reported that owners passed a resolution to give the league permission to schedule two more teams for a second short-week game. At the time, he mentioned that Amazon wanted a Black Friday game. He pegged the cost to Amazon at between $70 million to $100 million for the game, on top of the $1 billion annually that Amazon will pay the NFL for Thursday Night Football.
With the decision, the NFL will be pushing two teams to a second week of just three or four days of rest during the season. Thursday Night Football has been fairly controversial among players, some of whom have publicly cited safety concerns due to the quick turnaround in an already grueling, injury-riddled season.
As has been the case with the expansion of the NFL’s Thanksgiving schedule to three games, the league is set to impede on a day that has generally been reserved for college football. This year, Texas vs. Baylor, North Carolina vs. NC State, Arizona vs. Arizona State, Missouri vs. Arkansas, Iowa vs. Nebraska and Florida State vs. Florida are among the games slated for Black Friday.
