The television rights to broadcast
National Football League
The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the ma ...
(NFL) games are the most lucrative and expensive rights of any American sport. Television brought
professional football into prominence in the modern era after
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
. Since then, National Football League broadcasts have become among the most-watched programs on American television, and the financial fortunes of entire networks have rested on owning NFL broadcasting rights. This has raised questions about the impartiality of the networks' coverage of games and whether they can criticize the NFL without fear of losing the rights and their income.
Since the 1960s, all regular season and playoff games broadcast in the United States have been aired by national television networks. Since 1998, regionally shown games on Sunday afternoons have been televised on
CBS and
Fox
Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush'').
Twelv ...
, which primarily carry games of
AFC
AFC may stand for:
Organizations
* Action for Children, a UK children's charity
* AFC Enterprises, the franchisor of Popeye's Chicken and Biscuits
* Africa Finance Corporation, a pan-African multilateral development finance institution
* A ...
and
NFC teams respectively (the conference of the away team generally determines the broadcaster of an inter-conference game). Nationally televised regular season games on Sunday and Monday nights have aired on
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters ...
and
ESPN
ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...
, respectively, since 2006. In addition, a "flexible scheduling" policy allows the league to reschedule Sunday afternoon and night games to different time slots and/or re-assign them to different networks regardless of conference (Monday Night games will not be subject to this policy until 2023, and therefore must be played at the same time and on the same network as originally scheduled). During the postseason, ESPN airs one game, NBC airs three, while CBS and Fox air the rest of the AFC and NFC games, respectively. The
Super Bowl has then rotated annually among CBS, Fox, and NBC.
With games airing on CBS, NBC, Fox, and ESPN/
ABC, the NFL thus holds broadcast contracts with four companies (
Paramount Global
Paramount Global (Trade name, doing business as Paramount) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational mass media and entertainment Conglomerate (company), conglomerate owned and operated by National Amusements (79.4%) and headquar ...
,
NBCUniversal
NBCUniversal Media, LLC is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate corporation owned by Comcast and headquartered at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, United States.
NBCUniversal is primaril ...
,
Fox Corporation
Fox Corporation (stylized in all-caps as FOX Corporation) is a publicly traded American mass media company operated and controlled by media mogul Rupert Murdoch and headquartered at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in New York City. Incorporated ...
and
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment industry, entertainment conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios (Burbank), Walt Disney Stud ...
/
Hearst Communications
Hearst Communications, Inc., often referred to simply as Hearst, is an American multinational mass media and business information conglomerate based in Hearst Tower in Midtown Manhattan, New York City.
Hearst owns newspapers, magazines, televi ...
, respectively) that control a combined
vast majority of the country's television product. These four broadcasters paid a combined total of US$39.6 billion to air games from 2014 to 2022.
They previously paid a combined total of $20.4 billion to air games between 2006 and 2013. They will then pay over $110 billion for the rights lasting from 2023 through 2033.
NFL preseason telecasts are more in line with the other major sports leagues' regular-season telecasts: preseason telecasts are more locally produced, usually by a
local affiliate of one of the above
terrestrial television
Terrestrial television or over-the-air television (OTA) is a type of television broadcasting in which the signal transmission occurs via radio waves from the terrestrial (Earth-based) transmitter of a television station, TV station to a televis ...
networks. Some preseason games will air nationally, however. Under the NFL's anti-siphoning rules for cable games, these stations usually will air simulcasts of ESPN and/or NFL Network games in their local markets if the local team is playing.
Overview of schedule
The NFL
regular season
In an organized sports league, a typical season is the portion of one year in which regulated games of the sport
Sport pertains to any form of competitive physical activity or game that aims to use, maintain, or improve physical ability ...
begins in the second weekend in September (the weekend after
Labor Day
Labor Day is a federal holiday in the United States celebrated on the first Monday in September to honor and recognize the American labor movement and the works and contributions of laborers to the development and achievements of the United ...
in the United States) and ends in mid-January. Each team plays 17 games during an 18-week period. Typically, the majority of each week's games are played on Sunday afternoon. The Sunday afternoon games are televised regionally, where the particular game available on local television will depend on where the viewer is located, and begin at either 1:00 p.m., 4:05 p.m., or 4:25 p.m.
Eastern Time
The Eastern Time Zone (ET) is a time zone encompassing part or all of 23 states in the eastern part of the United States, parts of eastern Canada, the state of Quintana Roo in Mexico, Panama, Colombia, mainland Ecuador, Peru, and a small por ...
. In addition, there are usually single nationally televised games each on Thursday night, Sunday night, and Monday night. These
primetime
Prime time or the peak time is the block of broadcast programming taking place during the middle of the evening for a television show. It is mostly targeted towards adults (and sometimes families). It is used by the major television networks to ...
games are broadcast across the country over one national over-the-air broadcast or cable network, where there are no regional restrictions, nor any other competing NFL contest.
All
playoff
The playoffs, play-offs, postseason or finals of a sports league are a competition played after the regular season by the top competitors to determine the league champion or a similar accolade. Depending on the league, the playoffs may be eithe ...
games, the
Super Bowl and the
Pro Bowl
The National Football League All-Star Game (1939–1942), Pro Bowl (1951–2022), or Pro Bowl Games (starting in 2023) is an annual event held by the National Football League (NFL) featuring the league's star players.
The format has changed thro ...
are nationally televised on either Saturday, Sunday or Monday in January and February, and either in the afternoon or in primetime.
Scheduling during the
NFL preseason
The National Football League preseason is the period each year during which NFL teams play several not-for-the-record exhibition games before the actual "regular" season starts. Beginning with the featured Pro Football Hall of Fame game in early ...
is more lenient in that most games usually start based on local time. Thus, games on the West Coast are usually played after 7:00 p.m.
Pacific Time
The Pacific Time Zone (PT) is a time zone encompassing parts of western Canada, the western United States, and western Mexico. Places in this zone observe standard time by subtracting eight hours from Coordinated Universal Time ( UTC−08:00). ...
(10:00 p.m. Eastern Time). However, the handful of primetime, nationally televised preseason games are still played at approximately 8:30 p.m. Eastern Time.
Current broadcasting contracts
The television rights to the NFL are the most expensive rights of not only any American sport, but any American entertainment property. With the fragmentation of audiences due to the increased specialization of broadcast and cable TV networks, sports remain one of the few entertainment properties that not only can guarantee a large and diversified audience, but one that will watch live broadcasts.
The
Super Bowl often ranks among the most watched shows of the year. Four of
Nielsen Media Research
Nielsen Media Research (NMR) is an American firm that measures media audiences, including television, radio, theatre, films (via the AMC Theatres MAP program), and newspapers. Headquartered in New York City, it is best known for the Nielsen rat ...
's top 10 programs of all time are Super Bowls. Networks have purchased a share of the broadcasting rights to the NFL as a means of raising the entire network's profile.
The NFL distributes television revenue to all teams equally, regardless of performance. each team receives $255 million annually from the league's television contracts, up 150% from $99.9 million in 2010.
Under the current television contracts, which began during the 2022 season, regular season games are broadcast on seven networks:
Prime Video
Amazon Prime Video, also known simply as Prime Video, is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming and rental service of Amazon offered as a standalone service or as part of Amazon's Prime subscription. The service pr ...
,
CBS,
Fox
Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush'').
Twelv ...
,
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters ...
,
ESPN
ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...
/
ABC and the
NFL Network
NFL Network (occasionally abbreviated on-air as NFLN) is an American sports-oriented pay television network owned by the National Football League (NFL) and is part of NFL Media, which also includes NFL.com, NFL Films, NFL Mobile, NFL Now and N ...
.
Since the
2012 NFL season
The 2012 NFL season was the 93rd season of the National Football League and the 47th of the Super Bowl era. It began on Wednesday, September 5, 2012, with the defending Super Bowl XLVI champion New York Giants falling to the Dallas Cowboys in ...
, the major networks have invested more in
audio description
Audio description, also referred to as a video description, described video, or more precisely called a visual description, is a form of narration used to provide information surrounding key visual elements in a media work (such as a film or tele ...
due to FCC guidelines ramping up the requirements of opening up the
second audio program
Second audio program (SAP), also known as secondary audio programming, is an auxiliary audio channel for analog television that can be broadcast or transmitted both over-the-air and by cable television. Used mostly for audio description or o ...
audio channel to access audio description, which is also used by some networks to provide
Spanish language
Spanish ( or , Castilian) is a Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from colloquial Latin spoken on the Iberian peninsula. Today, it is a world language, global language with more than 500 millio ...
audio of their primetime programming. Therefore, all of the NFL's broadcasting partners have added Spanish language audio commentary of games, either through a separate channel or over the SAP channel.
ESPN simulcasts ''Monday Night Football'' with Spanish-language commentary and graphics over
ESPN Deportes
ESPN Deportes (, ''ESPN Sports'') is an American multinational Spanish-language pay television sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., a joint venture between The Walt Disney Company (which owns a controlling 80% stake) and Hearst Communications (wh ...
and has since the move of ''MNF'' to ESPN in 2006, though its ABC simulcasts of games does carry the ESPN Deportes commentary over SAP on ABC. In 2017 and 2018, the Spanish-language coverage was also simulcast on
ESPN2
ESPN2 is an American multinational pay television network owned by ESPN Inc., a joint venture between The Walt Disney Company (which owns a controlling 80% stake) and Hearst Communications (which owns the remaining 20%).
ESPN2 was initially ...
during the first two months of the season. In the 2020-21 playoffs and every playoffs since, ESPN Deportes also aired an AFC Divisional Playoff game and the AFC Championship Game.
NBC's sister Spanish-language cable network mun2 (which rebranded as
Universo
Universo is a Legion of Super-Heroes supervillain in the 30th and 31st centuries of the DC Comics universe. He was created by Jim Shooter and Curt Swan, and first appeared in ''Adventure Comics'' #349 (October 1966).
Pre-Zero Hour
Universo first ...
in 2015) began to simulcast select Sunday Night Football games in the 2014 season as part of the new television contract, while its Spanish-language counterpart
Telemundo Deportes provides the branding for NBC's SAP Spanish commentary.
Fox's Spanish-language sports network
Fox Deportes
Fox Deportes (formerly Fox Sports en Español and stylized in all caps as FOX Deportes) is an American pay television network dedicated to broadcasting sports-related programming in Spanish, aimed at the Hispanic population in the United State ...
began broadcasting select Fox games, including the playoffs and Super Bowl XLVIII in Spanish during the 2013 season.
Super Bowl LI
Super Bowl LI was an American football game played at NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas, on February 5, 2017, to determine the champion of the National Football League (NFL) for the 2016 season. The American Football Conference (AFC) champion Ne ...
for Fox featured Spanish audio exclusive to Fox Deportes, without a SAP component over-the-air.
CBS, which lacked any Spanish language outlets prior to the 2019 remerger (
Trés is legally part of the family, but is a cable channel), still uses solely SAP for its Spanish simulcasts. It relied on ESPN Deportes to simulcast
Super Bowl 50
Super Bowl 50 was an American football game to determine the champion of the National Football League (NFL) for the 2015 season. The American Football Conference (AFC) champion Denver Broncos defeated the National Football Conference (NFC) ...
,
LIII and
LV in Spanish, though it still carried Spanish SAP audio on the CBS broadcast of the game.
NFL finished new contract negotiations for its media rights deals for $110 billion over 11 years on March 18, 2021. In the new contracts, ABC will be eligible to air the Super Bowl for the first time since
Super Bowl XL
Super Bowl XL was an American football game between the National Football Conference (NFC) champion Seattle Seahawks and the American Football Conference (AFC) champion Pittsburgh Steelers to decide the National Football League (NFL) champion ...
in 2006. Starting 2022,
Amazon
Amazon most often refers to:
* Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology
* Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin
* Amazon River, in South America
* Amazon (company), an American multinational technolog ...
will be the new home for ''
Thursday Night Football
''Thursday Night Football'' (often abbreviated as ''TNF'') is the branding used for broadcasts of National Football League (NFL) games that broadcast primarily on Thursday nights. Most of the games kick off at 8:15 Eastern Time (8:20 prior to 20 ...
''. Amazon is now the first and only streaming service to own full rights over a package of NFL games.
Per
Adam Schefter
Adam Schefter (born December 21, 1966) is an American sports writer and television analyst. After graduating from University of Michigan and Northwestern University with degrees in journalism, Schefter wrote for several newspapers, including ''T ...
, the new 2021 contract also includes the agreement for
ESPN+
ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...
to stream one exclusive national game each year starting with the
2022 NFL season
The 2022 NFL season is the 103rd season of the National Football League (NFL). The season began on September 8, 2022, with the defending Super Bowl LVI champion Los Angeles Rams falling to Buffalo in the NFL Kickoff Game, and will end on Jan ...
. Starting in 2023 NFL Season, ESPN will broadcast a wild-card game and a divisional playoff game, flexible scheduling will also be added to ''
Monday Night Football
''ESPN Monday Night Football'' (abbreviated as ''MNF'' and also known as ''ESPN Monday Night Football on ABC'' for simulcasts) is an American live television broadcast of weekly National Football League (NFL) games currently airing on ESPN, A ...
'' for Week 12 and beyond.
Sunday regional games
AFC and NFC packages
Since 1970, the regional Sunday games (1:00 p.m. "early" and 4:05/4:25 p.m. "late" games Eastern time) have been split into
AFC
AFC may stand for:
Organizations
* Action for Children, a UK children's charity
* AFC Enterprises, the franchisor of Popeye's Chicken and Biscuits
* Africa Finance Corporation, a pan-African multilateral development finance institution
* A ...
and
NFC "packages." Each package is held by a single network:
CBS has held the AFC package since 1998, and
Fox
Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush'').
Twelv ...
has held the NFC package since 1994. These packages include Sunday afternoon games during each week of the regular season, a single game for each network on
Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving is a national holiday celebrated on various dates in the United States, Canada, Grenada, Saint Lucia, Liberia, and unofficially in countries like Brazil and Philippines. It is also observed in the Netherlander town of Leiden ...
, wild card playoff games, divisional playoff games, and the respective conference championship game for each network.
In
1970
Events
January
* January 1 – Unix time epoch reached at 00:00:00 UTC.
* January 5 – The 7.1 Tonghai earthquake shakes Tonghai County, Yunnan province, China, with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (''Extreme''). Between 10,000 and 1 ...
, when the
NFL and AFL merged, and home
blackouts were put into place for AFC games (some AFL teams had lifted these during its run; as an example, most
New York Jets' home games in 1968 and 1969 were telecast on
WNBC-TV New York); this assured that all Sunday afternoon road games would be seen on the same network.
Classification as A, B, or C games
The Sunday games are classified as "A", "B", or "C" games. "A" games are usually the primary game for each network (1:00 ET for Eastern and Central time zone or 4:05 ET for Mountain and Pacific time zone games in a single-game week), and if the network has a doubleheader, is typically the 4:25 ET game. "B" games are typically the primary 1:00 ET game when the network has a doubleheader, or the secondary game if the network has a single game. "C" games are only shown in the playing teams' markets, and in some cases, markets where the game has playoff implications for the local team.
Market size and team success plays a huge factor in determining the level of games. For example,
Green Bay has a city population of 105,000, one of the smallest for a city with a sports team. But the Packers usually have the "A" or "B" game because of their long history and almost unparalleled success. (The team is actually two markets for the NFL policy;
Milwaukee
Milwaukee ( ), officially the City of Milwaukee, is both the most populous and most densely populated city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, Milwaukee County. With a population of 577,222 at th ...
is the other primary market for the team, as the team prior to played selected games in Milwaukee, including an NFL Championship Game held in the infield of the
Milwaukee Mile
The Milwaukee Mile is a oval race track in the central United States, located on the grounds of the Wisconsin State Fair Park in West Allis, Wisconsin, a suburb west of Milwaukee. Its grandstand and bleachers seats approximately 37,000 spectator ...
.) The
Dallas Cowboys
The Dallas Cowboys are a professional American football team based in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. The Cowboys compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East divis ...
(due to that team's
national popularity regardless of on-the-field play) and a team or player that has had recent success (such as the
New England Patriots
The New England Patriots are a professional American football team based in the Greater Boston area. They compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) AFC East, East divisio ...
due to that team's success since
Bill Belichick
William Stephen Belichick (; born April 16, 1952) is an American professional football coach who is the head coach of the New England Patriots of the National Football League (NFL). Additionally, he exercises extensive authority over the Patr ...
took over in 2000, then the
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are a professional American football team based in Tampa, Florida. The Buccaneers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) NFC South, South divisio ...
following
Tom Brady
Thomas Edward Patrick Brady Jr. (born August 3, 1977) is an American football quarterback for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the National Football League (NFL). He spent his first 20 seasons with the New England Patriots organization, with whic ...
's departure from New England in 2020) have typically been shown in the national doubleheader timeslot for ratings purposes, despite affiliate requests to show a team that may have more appeal locally; these games are typically decided by the NFL and CBS or Fox, depending on who has the doubleheader that week.
Interconference games
For interconference games, the visiting team generally determines which network is assigned for the game: an AFC team at NFC team game is typically assigned to CBS, and an NFC at AFC game is generally given to Fox. This allows both Fox and CBS affiliates in a team's primary market to carry games from the team during the season.
After a Broncos-Vikings game was moved to Fox in 2011 because of Fox having a lack of games as a result of an NFL flexible scheduling policy (''
see below''), the NFL permanently instituted a "cross-flex" policy in 2014, allowing Fox games to be moved to CBS and CBS games moved to Fox.
On occasion, both of a team's home interconference games are played in prime time, depriving the opposite conference's network of any games involving the team. This happened in to the
Los Angeles Rams
The Los Angeles Rams are a professional American football team based in the Greater Los Angeles, Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Rams compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC Wes ...
, to the
Indianapolis Colts
The Indianapolis Colts are a professional American football team based in Indianapolis. The Colts compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) South division. Since the 20 ...
, to the
Houston Oilers
The Houston Oilers were a professional American football team that played in Houston from its founding in 1960 to 1996 before relocating to Memphis, and later Nashville, Tennessee becoming the Tennessee Titans. The Oilers began play in 1960 a ...
, to both the
Buffalo Bills
The Buffalo Bills are a professional American football team based in the Buffalo metropolitan area. The Bills compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) East division ...
and
San Diego Chargers
The San Diego Chargers were a professional American football team that played in San Diego from 1961 until the end of the 2016 season, before relocating to Los Angeles, where the franchise had played its inaugural 1960 season. The team is now ...
, and to the
Miami
Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a coastal metropolis and the county seat of Miami-Dade County in South Florida, United States. With a population of 442,241 at th ...
Dolphins
A dolphin is an aquatic mammal within the infraorder Cetacea. Dolphin species belong to the families Delphinidae (the oceanic dolphins), Platanistidae (the Indian river dolphins), Iniidae (the New World river dolphins), Pontoporiidae (t ...
, to the
New England Patriots
The New England Patriots are a professional American football team based in the Greater Boston area. They compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) AFC East, East divisio ...
, to the
Baltimore Ravens
The Baltimore Ravens are a professional American football team based in Baltimore, Maryland. The Ravens compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference (AFC) North division. The team plays it ...
, to the
Atlanta Falcons, to the
Arizona Cardinals
The Arizona Cardinals are a professional American football team based in the Phoenix metropolitan area. The Cardinals compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC West, West division, an ...
and to the
New Orleans Saints
The New Orleans Saints are a professional American football team based in New Orleans. The Saints compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) South division. Since 1975, the te ...
. In the 1997 Dolphins' case, their home game against the
Chicago Bears
The Chicago Bears are a professional American football team based in Chicago. The Bears compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) North division. The Bears have won nine ...
had been initially slated for Fox, but was moved to Monday night due to Game 7 of the
World Series
The World Series is the annual championship series of Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada, contested since 1903 World Series, 1903 between the champion teams of the American League (AL) and the National League (NL). The ...
that was played in the previous night. In the 2015 Cardinals' case, their home game against the
Cincinnati Bengals
The Cincinnati Bengals are a professional American football team based in Cincinnati. The Bengals compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) North division. The club's home ...
had been initially slated for CBS, but was moved to Sunday night on NBC via flexible scheduling.
The
Arizona Cardinals
The Arizona Cardinals are a professional American football team based in the Phoenix metropolitan area. The Cardinals compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC West, West division, an ...
,
Detroit Lions
The Detroit Lions are a professional American football team based in Detroit. The Lions compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) North Division. The team play their home games at For ...
,
New Orleans Saints
The New Orleans Saints are a professional American football team based in New Orleans. The Saints compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) South division. Since 1975, the te ...
and
New York Giants
The New York Giants are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Giants compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East divisio ...
, all NFC teams, also had both their home interconference games in prime time, but aired at least once on CBS regardless: the Cardinals appeared on ''
Thursday Night Football
''Thursday Night Football'' (often abbreviated as ''TNF'') is the branding used for broadcasts of National Football League (NFL) games that broadcast primarily on Thursday nights. Most of the games kick off at 8:15 Eastern Time (8:20 prior to 20 ...
'' in Week 5 at the
San Francisco 49ers
The San Francisco 49ers (also written as the San Francisco Forty-Niners) are a professional American football team based in the San Francisco Bay Area. The 49ers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the league's National ...
, the Lions appeared in their traditional Thanksgiving Day game against the
Chicago Bears
The Chicago Bears are a professional American football team based in Chicago. The Bears compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) North division. The Bears have won nine ...
, the Saints had their games against the
Arizona Cardinals
The Arizona Cardinals are a professional American football team based in the Phoenix metropolitan area. The Cardinals compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC West, West division, an ...
and the
Carolina Panthers
The Carolina Panthers are a professional American football team based in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Panthers compete in the National Football League (NFL), as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) South division. ...
crossflexed from Fox, and the Giants had their games against the
Chicago Bears
The Chicago Bears are a professional American football team based in Chicago. The Bears compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) North division. The Bears have won nine ...
and
Dallas Cowboys
The Dallas Cowboys are a professional American football team based in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. The Cowboys compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East divis ...
crossflexed from Fox.
The
Seattle Seahawks
The Seattle Seahawks are a professional American football team based in Seattle. The Seahawks compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) West, which they rejoined in 2002 a ...
did not appear on NBC in their inaugural season of , nor did the
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are a professional American football team based in Tampa, Florida. The Buccaneers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) NFC South, South divisio ...
in , despite neither playing a single prime time game. In 1976, Seattle played in the
NFC West
The National Football Conference - Western Division or NFC West is one of the four divisions of the National Football Conference (NFC) in the National Football League (NFL). It currently has four members: the Arizona Cardinals, the Los Ange ...
and played their sole interconference game at Tampa Bay (thus on CBS), whereas in 1977, the teams swapped conferences, so Tampa Bay played in the
NFC Central
The National Football Conference – Northern Division or NFC North is one of the four divisions of the National Football Conference (NFC) in the National Football League (NFL). Nicknamed the "Black and Blue Division" for the rough and tough ...
and played their sole interconference game at Seattle (thus on CBS). Seattle would later return to the NFC West in
2002
File:2002 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 2002 Winter Olympics are held in Salt Lake City; Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and her daughter Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon die; East Timor gains independence from Indonesia and ...
.
In addition to the above, a few teams prior to the 2002 realignment had their sole home interconference game played in prime time. From 1978–2001, this happened in to the
Detroit Lions
The Detroit Lions are a professional American football team based in Detroit. The Lions compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) North Division. The team play their home games at For ...
,
Buffalo Bills
The Buffalo Bills are a professional American football team based in the Buffalo metropolitan area. The Bills compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) East division ...
and
Houston Oilers
The Houston Oilers were a professional American football team that played in Houston from its founding in 1960 to 1996 before relocating to Memphis, and later Nashville, Tennessee becoming the Tennessee Titans. The Oilers began play in 1960 a ...
, to the
Miami Dolphins
The Miami Dolphins are a professional American football team based in the Miami metropolitan area. They compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member team of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) East division. The team pl ...
and
Dallas Cowboys
The Dallas Cowboys are a professional American football team based in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. The Cowboys compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East divis ...
, to the
Minnesota Vikings
The Minnesota Vikings are a professional American football team based in Minneapolis. They compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the National Football Conference (NFC) North division. Founded in 1960 as an expansio ...
and to the
Jacksonville Jaguars
The Jacksonville Jaguars are a professional American football team based in Jacksonville, Florida. The Jaguars compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference (AFC) South division. The team pla ...
. The 1982 and 1987 teams all had one of their two scheduled interconference home games cancelled by a players' strike. Additionally, the
1972 Miami Dolphins, the only NFL team to complete a perfect season, did not appear on CBS; their lone interconference home game vs. the
St. Louis Cardinals was broadcast on ''Monday Night Football'', and
Super Bowl VII
Super Bowl VII was an American football game between the American Football Conference (AFC) champion Miami Dolphins and the National Football Conference (NFC) champion Washington Redskins to decide the National Football League (NFL) champion f ...
was broadcast by NBC.
In addition, the team's home stadium would not make an appearance on either CBS or Fox due to interconference home game being crossflexed, this happened in to the
Oakland Raiders
The Oakland Raiders were a professional American football team that played in Oakland from its founding in 1960 to 1981 and again from 1995 to 2019 before relocating to the Las Vegas metropolitan area where they now play as the Las Vegas Ra ...
, to the
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are a professional American football team based in Tampa, Florida. The Buccaneers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) NFC South, South divisio ...
, to both the
Los Angeles Rams
The Los Angeles Rams are a professional American football team based in the Greater Los Angeles, Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Rams compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC Wes ...
and
Los Angeles Chargers
The Los Angeles Chargers are a professional American football team based in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Chargers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) West division, and ...
, to the
San Francisco 49ers
The San Francisco 49ers (also written as the San Francisco Forty-Niners) are a professional American football team based in the San Francisco Bay Area. The 49ers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the league's National ...
and to the
Tennessee Titans
The Tennessee Titans are a professional American football team based in Nashville, Tennessee. The Titans compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference (AFC) South division, and play their h ...
. Intraconference games may be crossflexed to protect both networks.
Doubleheaders and single games
Three games (with some contractual exceptions, see below) are broadcast in any one market each Sunday morning/afternoon, with one network being allocated a "doubleheader" each week:
*A 1:00 p.m.
ET (10:00 a.m.
PT) "early" game and a 4:25 p.m. ET (1:25 p.m. PT) "late" game
While the other network broadcasting ''either'':
*A 1:00 p.m. ET (10:00 a.m. PT) game
*Or a 4:05 p.m. ET (1:05 p.m. PT) game
Start times
Since 1998, early games have the precise, official start time of 1:01 p.m. ET, which allows for one network commercial and the NFL broadcast copyright teaser animation. However, game times are generally advertised simply as 1 p.m. starts. In addition, the league revised the late games to start at 4:05 p.m. ET if it was the only game televised by the network that week and to start at 4:15 p.m. ET (moved to 4:25 p.m. ET in ) if it was part of a doubleheader. The additional 20 (10 prior to 2012) minutes for doubleheaders allowed the early games extra time to be shown to completion, and avoid continuing past the late game's scheduled kickoff. For single games, the start of 5 minutes past the hour allows the network time for a short introduction (as three hours had passed since the
pre-game show
A pre-game, pregame, or pre-match show is a television or radio presentation that occurs immediately before the live broadcast of a major sporting event. They typically feature previews and analysis relating to upcoming games (either a larger fixt ...
has aired) and one commercial break before kickoff. In those cases there is no need to avoid early-game overlap as there is no early game shown. In addition, it allows those games to end earlier. This is especially important for CBS, which wants to air ''
60 Minutes
''60 Minutes'' is an American television news magazine broadcast on the CBS television network. Debuting in 1968, the program was created by Don Hewitt and Bill Leonard, who chose to set it apart from other news programs by using a unique st ...
'' at 7 p.m. ET/6 p.m. CT, or as close to that time as possible, in Eastern and Central time markets which receive only a single late game.
Time zone rules
Sunday afternoon games in the
Mountain
A mountain is an elevated portion of the Earth's crust, generally with steep sides that show significant exposed bedrock. Although definitions vary, a mountain may differ from a plateau in having a limited summit area, and is usually higher t ...
and
Pacific
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...
time zones are always scheduled for 2:05 or 2:25 p.m. Mountain Time and 1:05 or 1:25 p.m. Pacific Time. No games before 12:00 p.m. MT (2:00 p.m. ET) are ever scheduled, partly to avoid conflict with religious services in those cities; Denver had three noon MT kickoffs at
Mile High Stadium
Mile High Stadium (originally Bears Stadium until 1968) was an outdoor multi-purpose stadium located in Denver, Colorado from 1948 to 2001.
The stadium was built in 1948 to accommodate the Denver Bears baseball team, which was a member of th ...
late in the
1972 season, but the experiment was never repeated.
Doubleheader allotments
Starting with the 2021 season with the introduction of the 17-game season, Fox and CBS each have eight doubleheader weeks during the season between weeks 2 and 17 with both networks having the doubleheader for weeks 1 and 18.
These are not necessarily alternating weeks; one network may have two or rarely three consecutive doubleheaders; this only occurs when one network has a doubleheader weeks 2 and 3 after both networks had the doubleheader in week 1, or in weeks 16 and 17, and then both networks have doubleheaders week 18; has happened to Fox 2019 and CBS in 2018. Fox requests to carry a doubleheader on the Sunday it airs a World Series game (typically Game 5), and uses the featured 4:25 game as a lead in for the
baseball playoffs (though in
1996
File:1996 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: A bomb explodes at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, set off by a radical anti-abortionist; The center fuel tank explodes on TWA Flight 800, causing the plane to crash and killing everyone on b ...
,
2001
The September 11 attacks against the United States by Al-Qaeda, which killed 2,977 people and instigated the global war on terror, were a defining event of 2001. The United States led a multi-national coalition in an invasion of Afghanistan ...
,
2005
File:2005 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico; the Funeral of Pope John Paul II is held in Vatican City; "Me at the zoo", the first video ever to be uploaded to YouTube; Eris (dwarf planet), Er ...
,
2014
File:2014 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Stocking up supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE) for the Western African Ebola virus epidemic; Citizens examining the ruins after the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping; Bundles of wat ...
,
2019
File:2019 collage v1.png, From top left, clockwise: Hong Kong protests turn to widespread riots and civil disobedience; House of Representatives votes to adopt articles of impeachment against Donald Trump; CRISPR gene editing first used to experim ...
and
2020
2020 was heavily defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to global social and economic disruption, mass cancellations and postponements of events, worldwide lockdowns and the largest economic recession since the Great Depression in ...
Fox did not have a doubleheader on the day it broadcast of the World Series).
During weeks 1 and 18, both networks are given doubleheaders; this has been the case since 2021 for week 1 and 2006 for the final week of the regular season.
From 1990 through 2005, one network received nine doubleheaders during the 17-week season, and the other network received eight (except 1993, when CBS and NBC each received nine in an 18-week regular season).
Doubleheader allotments were often assigned with restrictions because of other network commitments. This happened during Finals Sunday of the
U.S. Open tennis championships (September) (CBS, week 1 1976, '82, '85-'87, '89-'90, '99 and again 2001–2014; week 2 1979-81, '83-'84, '88, '91-'93, '98, '00), or Major League Baseball playoffs in October (NBC, typically during League Championship Series from 1976 to 1989, and again in 1996 and 1997, World Series 1978 to 1984, when Sunday games were afternoon games, CBS, League Championship Series, 1990 to 1993 and Fox, League Division Series 2001 and League Championship Series from 2002 to 2006 and again in 2012). During these weeks, the restricted conference's teams in the
Mountain
A mountain is an elevated portion of the Earth's crust, generally with steep sides that show significant exposed bedrock. Although definitions vary, a mountain may differ from a plateau in having a limited summit area, and is usually higher t ...
and
Pacific
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...
time zones could not play at home during the weekend in question, unless they either hosted an interconference game, or were scheduled in prime time (regardless of opponent). The rule was effectively eliminated by the new cross-flex rule in 2014, meaning the NFL could apply the new rule and assign games that would be on the restricted network to the other network. In
1991
File:1991 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Boris Yeltsin, elected as Russia's first president, waves the new flag of Russia after the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt, orchestrated by Soviet hardliners; Mount Pinatubo erupts in the ...
(
Charleston, South Carolina market) and
1995
File:1995 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: O.J. Simpson is acquitted of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman from the year prior in "The Trial of the Century" in the United States; The Great Hanshin earthquake strike ...
(
Rochester, New York
Rochester () is a city in the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Monroe County, and the fourth-most populous in the state after New York City, Buffalo, and Yonkers, with a population of 211,328 at the 2020 United States census. Located i ...
market), NBC did not allow their games to be played in the early slot (1:00 p.m. ET) in order to cover the final day of matches in golf's
Ryder Cup
The Ryder Cup is a biennial men's golf competition between teams from Europe and the United States. The competition is contested every two years with the venue alternating between courses in the United States and Europe. The Ryder Cup is named af ...
(no restrictions in 1993 because the matches would end before 5:30 p.m. local time, or 12:30 p.m. ET).
Due to the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identified ...
in 2020, the league had to accommodate similar broadcasting conflicts when
two men's major golf championships were postponed to the fall. The league gave Fox one late game in Week 2,
Washington Football Team
The Washington Commanders are a professional American football team based in the Washington metropolitan area. The Commanders compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) E ...
at
Arizona Cardinals
The Arizona Cardinals are a professional American football team based in the Phoenix metropolitan area. The Cardinals compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC West, West division, an ...
, to allow viewers to see the conclusion of the
U.S. Open on
Fox Sports 1
Fox Sports 1 (FS1) is an American pay television channel owned by the Fox Sports Media Group, a unit of Fox Corporation. FS1 replaced the motorsports network Speed on August 17, 2013, at the same time that its companion channel Fox Sports ...
September 20. Rights to the golf tournament were later transferred to NBC, whose single primetime window for football rendered the point moot. Similarly with final round of
The Masters
The Masters Tournament (usually referred to as simply The Masters, or the U.S. Masters outside North America) is one of the four major championships in professional golf. Scheduled for the first full week of April, the Masters is the first ma ...
rescheduled for November 15, CBS was not given any early games in Week 10.
NFL Sunday Ticket and NFL RedZone
Satellite broadcast company
DirecTV
DirecTV (trademarked as DIRECTV) is an American Multichannel television in the United States, multichannel video programming distributor based in El Segundo, California, El Segundo, California. Originally launched on June 17, 1994, its primary ...
offers
NFL Sunday Ticket
NFL Sunday Ticket is an out-of-market sports package that broadcasts National Football League (NFL) regular season games unavailable on local affiliates. It carries all regional Sunday afternoon games produced by Fox and CBS. The ideal customer ...
, a subscription-based package that allows all Sunday afternoon regional games to be watched. The only exception is that ''Sunday Ticket'' is subject to the same blackout rules as broadcast networks. This package is exclusive to DirecTV in the US on Satellite and it is offered online as well. In Canada, NFL Sunday Ticket is available via the streaming service
DAZN
DAZN ( "da zone") is a global sports entertainment platform. Different to traditional linear and satellite broadcasting, DAZN is an over-the-top (OTT) streaming service meaning that it is delivered directly to viewers via the internet.
The ...
as well on both cable and satellite providers, because Canadian law generally prevents one provider from offering a package on an exclusive basis.
Other cable and satellite providers in the United States, as well as several international services, have access to
NFL RedZone
''NFL RedZone'' (stylized as ''NFL RedZone from NFL Network'') is an American sports television channel owned and operated by NFL Network since 2009. As a "special" game-day exclusive, it broadcasts on Sundays during the NFL regular season from ...
, a premium service featuring whip around coverage of Sunday afternoon games in progress. The channel prides itself on showing "every touchdown from every game" using simulcasts from the relevant CBS and FOX feeds.
Sunday local market policies
Regular season Sunday afternoon games aired on CBS and Fox are distributed to affiliates by means of regional coverage. Each individual game is only broadcast to selected media markets.
The NFL imposes several television and blackout policies to maximize ratings and optimize stadium attendances.
Primary markets
Several factors determine which games are carried in each market. Each of the 32 NFL teams is assigned a "primary
market" which is the
metropolitan area where the club is located. Most teams also have a selected number of secondary markets. Secondary markets - which are almost exclusively non-NFL cities and towns - can be of any size, and are typically defined by an area where any part of the market falls within 75 miles of an NFL stadium. Small markets that have no clubs tend to strongly associate with geographically nearby or particularly relevant teams, but may fall outside of a 100-mile radius, are not necessarily an officially designated secondary markets by the NFL. Generally, games are aired in the primary and secondary markets as follows:
* All away games are aired in the primary and secondary markets. This is a gesture to old policies based on the ability for fans to attend games. Away games were looked upon as too difficult to travel to and attend.
* All sold-out home games are aired in the primary market. Games that do not sell out at least 72 hours prior to kickoff are subject to local blackout in the primary and all secondary markets. (''
see below'')
Restrictions on other games when local team is playing
The NFL rules have traditionally prohibited other NFL games from being shown on local television stations while a local team is playing a sold out, locally televised home game. Under these rules, when the home team is being shown on the network with the NFL single game, the doubleheader station can only air one of its games.
When this happens, there are only two games shown in the market. However, when the home team is being shown on the network with the NFL doubleheader, all three games can still air in the same market.
The rule was designed to encourage ticket-holders to show up at the stadium instead of watching another game on television. However, each network was guaranteed to have at least one game broadcast in every market, so some exceptions are granted to this rule, typically when one of the two Sunday game networks has a 1:00 p.m. or 4:30 p.m. live non-NFL event, such as golf, tennis, baseball, or drag racing.
Since 2014, this rule has not applied in Week 17 when both CBS and Fox have the doubleheader, so all markets receive four games that week. In 2019, this rule was loosened as a one-year test, allowing each market to air three games in some weeks regardless if the local team is playing at home.
Prior to the 2000 season, doubleheader rules were much more restrictive. Pre-2000, only one game from each network could be aired in a market where a home game was played, even if the home game was on the doubleheader network. Therefore, markets with two teams (such as New York) rarely got more than two games, since odds were that one of the two teams would be at home on any given Sunday. Consequently, the Jets or Giants were often scheduled on Saturday in the final two weeks of the season to free up Sunday for the other New York team.
Mid-game switches
During the afternoon games, CBS and Fox may switch a market's game to a more competitive one mid-game, particularly when a game becomes one-sided. For this to occur, one team must be ahead by at least 18 points in the second half.
Due to the controversial 1968 "
Heidi Game" incident on NBC, a primary media market must show its local team's game in its entirety and secondary markets usually follow suit for away games. Also, secondary markets (for home games) or any others where one team's popularity stands out may request a constant feed of that game, and in that case will not be switched.
If the local team is scheduled for the late game of a doubleheader, it has importance over any early game.
If 4:25 p.m. arrives, and the early game is ongoing, the primary affiliate (all games) and secondary affiliates (road games) are required to cut off the early game and switch to the start of the local team's game. Additional affiliates, including secondary affiliates for home games, may also request to pull out of an early game for a nearby team's late start. This is common in Texas, where many affiliates which are not considered secondary markets by the NFL still switch out of early games in order to get to the start of a 4:25
Dallas Cowboys
The Dallas Cowboys are a professional American football team based in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. The Cowboys compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East divis ...
game.
When a local team plays the early game of a doubleheader, that game holds importance over any late game. If the local team's early game runs beyond 4:25 p.m., the primary and secondary markets stay on until completion, and the late game is joined in-progress.
Shared media markets
For this reason, if two teams share a primary media market, their games are never scheduled on the same network on the same day (unless they play each other). Otherwise, the networks could theoretically have to cut away from one team's game to show the other. Since , two pairs of teams are affected by this rule, and are subject to additional rules described below:
* The
New York Giants
The New York Giants are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Giants compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East divisio ...
and
New York Jets
* The
Los Angeles Rams
The Los Angeles Rams are a professional American football team based in the Greater Los Angeles, Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Rams compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC Wes ...
and
Los Angeles Chargers
The Los Angeles Chargers are a professional American football team based in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Chargers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) West division, and ...
Chargers and Rams
The
Los Angeles Chargers
The Los Angeles Chargers are a professional American football team based in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Chargers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) West division, and ...
and
Los Angeles Rams
The Los Angeles Rams are a professional American football team based in the Greater Los Angeles, Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Rams compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC Wes ...
gained shared-marked status, after the Rams' returned to
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the wor ...
(from
St. Louis) in 2016, followed by the Chargers (from
San Diego
San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United States ...
) in 2017. After playing in separate stadiums from 2017 to 2019, they began sharing
SoFi Stadium
SoFi Stadium () is a 70,240-seat sports and entertainment indoor stadium in the Los Angeles suburb of Inglewood, California, United States. SoFi occupies the former site of the Hollywood Park Racetrack, from Los Angeles International Airport ...
in 2020.
* Every season, the Chargers and the Rams play at least 22 combined games which cannot be scheduled in the Sunday early time slot because they and most of their respective
AFC West
The American Football Conference – Western Division or AFC West is one of the four divisions of the American Football Conference (AFC) in the National Football League (NFL). The division comprises the Denver Broncos, Kansas City Chiefs, La ...
and
NFC West
The National Football Conference - Western Division or NFC West is one of the four divisions of the National Football Conference (NFC) in the National Football League (NFL). It currently has four members: the Arizona Cardinals, the Los Ange ...
rivals are in the Pacific and Mountain time zones: nine home games for one team and eight home games for the other; the Chargers' away games at
Denver
Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the United ...
and
Las Vegas
Las Vegas (; Spanish language, Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the List of United States cities by population, 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the U.S. state, state of Neva ...
; and the Rams' away games at
Arizona
Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southwestern United States. It is the list of U.S. states and territories by area, 6th largest and the list of U.S. states and territories by population, 14 ...
,
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
, and
Seattle
Seattle ( ) is a port, seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the county seat, seat of King County, Washington, King County, Washington (state), Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in bo ...
.
* During seasons in which the
AFC West
The American Football Conference – Western Division or AFC West is one of the four divisions of the American Football Conference (AFC) in the National Football League (NFL). The division comprises the Denver Broncos, Kansas City Chiefs, La ...
and
NFC West
The National Football Conference - Western Division or NFC West is one of the four divisions of the National Football Conference (NFC) in the National Football League (NFL). It currently has four members: the Arizona Cardinals, the Los Ange ...
play each other, this count increases to 24 or 25 total games. In addition to the games listed above, the Chargers will have two interconference away games in the Mountain or Pacific Time Zones and the Rams will have one or two such games (depending on whether their game against
Kansas City
The Kansas City metropolitan area is a bi-state metropolitan area anchored by Kansas City, Missouri. Its 14 counties straddle the border between the U.S. states of Missouri (9 counties) and Kansas (5 counties). With and a population of more ...
, located in the Central Time Zone, is away). However, one of these games is a head-to-head matchup between the two teams.
* During seasons in which the 17th game features an AFC West team at an NFC West team, this count increases to 23 games unless the Chargers and Rams play head-to-head in this game.
* The Rams' two interconference home games (with a visiting
AFC
AFC may stand for:
Organizations
* Action for Children, a UK children's charity
* AFC Enterprises, the franchisor of Popeye's Chicken and Biscuits
* Africa Finance Corporation, a pan-African multilateral development finance institution
* A ...
team) are televised by
CBS, and the Chargers' interconference home games (with a visiting
NFC team) are on
Fox
Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush'').
Twelv ...
, unless they are scheduled in prime time or are cross-flexed. This also limits the broadcast opportunities for the other team's game.
* When the Chargers and the Rams played in separate stadiums from 2017 to 2019, there were several times that both teams played late games on Sunday (including Week 2 of 2017 when both were at home), each of different networks. Whenever this happened, the must-show rule trumped the exclusivity rule, resulting in both games being shown in the Los Angeles Area at the same time. Although both teams now share
SoFi Stadium
SoFi Stadium () is a 70,240-seat sports and entertainment indoor stadium in the Los Angeles suburb of Inglewood, California, United States. SoFi occupies the former site of the Hollywood Park Racetrack, from Los Angeles International Airport ...
, they can still play late games at the same time on Sunday, only that one of them can be at home. On weeks both teams play home games, the other game is played either on Thursday or Monday night.
For the 2017 season, the NFL arranged four weeks in which one network would carry both the Rams and Chargers in separate time slots while the other had the rights to a doubleheader, thus giving the Los Angeles market four games in those weeks. Fox split its coverage between its two Los Angeles stations,
KTTV
KTTV (channel 11) is a television station in Los Angeles, California, United States, serving as the West Coast flagship of the Fox network. It is owned and operated by the network's Fox Television Stations division alongside MyNetworkTV ou ...
and
MyNetworkTV
MyNetworkTV (unofficially abbreviated MyTV, MyNet, MNT or MNTV, and sometimes referred to as My Network) is an American commercial broadcast television syndication service and former television network owned by Fox Corporation, operated by its ...
affiliate
KCOP-TV
KCOP-TV (channel 13) is a television station in Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, United States, serving as the West Coast of the United States, West Coast flagship (broadcasting), flagship of MyNetworkTV. It is owned-and-operated station, ow ...
. Likewise, CBS split between
KCBS-TV
KCBS-TV (channel 2) is a television station in Los Angeles, California, United States, serving as the West Coast flagship of the CBS network. It is owned and operated by the network's CBS News and Stations division alongside independent ...
and sister station
KCAL-TV
KCAL-TV (channel 9) is an independent television station in Los Angeles, California, United States. It is owned by the CBS News and Stations group alongside CBS West Coast flagship KCBS-TV (channel 2). Both stations share studios at the CB ...
. These instances required cross-flexing of one NFC game (the Rams hosted the
Seattle Seahawks
The Seattle Seahawks are a professional American football team based in Seattle. The Seahawks compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) West, which they rejoined in 2002 a ...
in Week 5 on CBS) and one AFC game (the Chargers hosted the
Buffalo Bills
The Buffalo Bills are a professional American football team based in the Buffalo metropolitan area. The Bills compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) East division ...
on Fox in Week 11).
Giants and Jets
The
New York Giants
The New York Giants are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Giants compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East divisio ...
and
New York Jets began sharing the New York City market after the Jets began play in 1960. Both teams played at
Giants Stadium
Giants Stadium (sometimes referred to as Giants Stadium at the Meadowlands or The Swamp) was a stadium located in East Rutherford, New Jersey, in the Meadowlands Sports Complex. The venue was open from 1976 to 2010, and it primarily hosted spo ...
from 1984 to 2009 and
MetLife Stadium
MetLife Stadium is a multi-purpose stadium at the Meadowlands Sports Complex in East Rutherford, New Jersey, 5 mi (8 km) west of New York City. Opened in 2010 to replace Giants Stadium, it serves as the home for the New York Giants a ...
since 2010.
Originally, the league almost never scheduled the Giants and the Jets to play their games at the same time. The league first allowed exceptions during the season due to unusual scheduling logistics. These exceptions marked the first times since the season that the Giants and Jets played games simultaneously. In the 2017 season, the teams were scheduled for the same time slot five times.
* The aforementioned Chargers and Rams' late time slot requirement does not exist for the Giants and Jets. Since all
AFC East
The American Football Conference – Eastern Division or AFC East is one of the four divisions of the American Football Conference (AFC) in the National Football League (NFL). There are currently four teams that reside in the division: the Buf ...
and
NFC East
The National Football Conference – Eastern Division or NFC East is one of the four divisions of the National Football Conference (NFC) in the National Football League (NFL). It currently has four members: the Dallas Cowboys (based in Arlin ...
teams are either in the Eastern or Central time zones, most of their games can be played in either the early 1:00 p.m. or the late 4:05 p.m./4:25 p.m. time slots.
* However, it is still impossible for both New York teams to play home games on the same day, because they share MetLife Stadium. Therefore, the other same conflicts still exists.
**As an example aversion, in , the Jets hosted the
Seattle Seahawks
The Seattle Seahawks are a professional American football team based in Seattle. The Seahawks compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) West, which they rejoined in 2002 a ...
and the
Los Angeles Rams
The Los Angeles Rams are a professional American football team based in the Greater Los Angeles, Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Rams compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC Wes ...
. The former game was scheduled during the same week in which the Giants played the
Minnesota Vikings
The Minnesota Vikings are a professional American football team based in Minneapolis. They compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the National Football Conference (NFC) North division. Founded in 1960 as an expansio ...
on ''
Monday Night Football
''ESPN Monday Night Football'' (abbreviated as ''MNF'' and also known as ''ESPN Monday Night Football on ABC'' for simulcasts) is an American live television broadcast of weekly National Football League (NFL) games currently airing on ESPN, A ...
'', while the latter game was scheduled during the same week in which the Giants played the
Cincinnati Bengals
The Cincinnati Bengals are a professional American football team based in Cincinnati. The Bengals compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) North division. The club's home ...
on ''Monday Night Football''. Conversely, the Giants' other interconference home game, vs. the
Baltimore Ravens
The Baltimore Ravens are a professional American football team based in Baltimore, Maryland. The Ravens compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference (AFC) North division. The team plays it ...
, was scheduled during the same week in which the Jets played on ''Monday Night Football''.
Week 14 of the 2021 season initially had one instance where Fox held the rights to both the Jets and Giants games despite CBS having the doubleheader (the Jets host New Orleans at 1:00 p.m., while the Giants play at the Los Angeles Chargers for a 4:05 p.m. contest). In such an instance, Fox would likely have split coverage between its New York properties,
WNYW
WNYW (channel 5) is a television station in New York City, serving as the flagship of the Fox network. It is owned and operated by the network's Fox Television Stations division alongside Secaucus, New Jersey–licensed MyNetworkTV flagship ...
and
WWOR-TV
WWOR-TV (channel 9) is a television station licensed to Secaucus, New Jersey, United States, serving the New York City area as the Flagship (broadcasting), flagship of MyNetworkTV. It is owned-and-operated station, owned and operated by Fox Te ...
. However, the NFL later crossflexed the Saints-Jets game to CBS.
Primary/secondary market conflicts
Although in close proximity, the
Washington Commanders
The Washington Commanders are a professional American football team based in the Washington metropolitan area. The Commanders compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) ...
and
Baltimore Ravens
The Baltimore Ravens are a professional American football team based in Baltimore, Maryland. The Ravens compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference (AFC) North division. The team plays it ...
are served by separate media markets, and so they can play at the same time and even on the same network. If both teams play at the same time on opposite networks with at least one at home, both games have aired in each market on a few occasions. Because Washington D.C. is an official secondary market for the Ravens but Baltimore is not an official secondary market for Washington, most cases involve a Ravens away game being aired in D.C. opposite a Washington home game.
In 2016, the same rule applied in Los Angeles, as Los Angeles was a primary market for the Rams and a secondary market for the Chargers (as the team was still playing in San Diego). However, no Chargers away games were scheduled opposite Rams home games.
Rams and Raiders in Los Angeles (1982–94)
When the Rams and Raiders shared the Los Angeles market from 1982 to 1994, the NFL was more lenient on its shared media markets policies, frequently scheduling home games for both teams at the same time. For example, during Week 17 of the 1994 season, their last respective home games in Los Angeles, both the Washington Redskins at Rams game and the Kansas City Chiefs at Raiders game were played at 1 p.m. PT. Likewise, the late Sunday afternoon games during Week 11 of the 1993 season included both the Kansas City Chiefs at the Raiders and the Atlanta Falcons at the Rams. Both the Rams and Raiders usually had trouble selling out their respective stadiums during their time in Los Angeles, thus their home games were frequently blacked out anyway.
49ers and Raiders in the San Francisco Bay Area (1960–1981 and 1995–2019)
When the 49ers and Raiders shared the Bay Area market from 1960 to 1981 and again from 1995 to 2019, originally the teams were typically not scheduled at the same time. To alleviate conflicts, both teams were scheduled for at least one prime time game, regardless of their records during the previous season.
In , with the Broncos–49ers game being played in
London, England
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a major s ...
during Week 8 of that season, the game occurred in the early time slot, something that would have been prohibited had the game been played in San Francisco. This allowed the Raiders to host the Seahawks on that day, marking the first time the 49ers played on CBS and the Raiders played on Fox on the same day, though the Raiders game was blacked out locally.
Starting in 2012, there were a number of times that the Raiders and 49ers both played late games on Sunday, often during Week 17. Whenever this happened, the must-show rule trumped the exclusivity rule, resulting in both games being shown in the Bay Area at the same time.
After the Raiders moved to Las Vegas in 2020, the schedule continues to be made so that the 49ers and Raiders are never scheduled to play at the same time on the same network so that all Raiders games can continue to air in the Bay Area market. With the Bay Area no longer being a shared market, it is now possible for one team to play the early game followed by the other team playing the late game on the doubleheader network.
Bonus coverage
When a media market's regionally televised game ends before the others, the network (CBS or Fox) may switch to "bonus coverage" of the ending of another game. However, the league imposes two restrictions that are designed to maximize the ratings of the late games on the doubleheader network, which tend to record the most NFL viewers during the day, often beating the audience for Sunday night games (these rules were changed in 2019, along with the singleheader rule, in an effort to keep viewers watching for longer periods of time.).
First, bonus coverage offered after any early time slot games cannot be shown past the start of the late time slot (either 4:20 ET for the doubleheader network or 4:25 ET for the single game network). This prevents people from continuing to watch the bonus coverage instead of seeing the beginning of the late doubleheader network's game (which is usually either their local team or the network's featured game). Networks may show highlights of the game, and usually will at the earliest opportunity. The network broadcasting the single game will sometimes show each play as soon as it ends as part of its post-game show. A station originally getting the game featured during bonus coverage will stay with it unless it is leaving to show a local team.
Second, bonus coverage cannot be shown after a late game on the single-game network because it will run in opposition to the ending of the late doubleheader network's game and ''Football Night in America''. However, the single-game network usually schedules most of its top games in the early 1:00 ET time slot (except for west coast teams' home games, and possibly either a Giants or Jets game), so this does not tend to be a major issue.
If the doubleheader network's games all finish before 7:30 ET, it is supposed to conclude the post-game show within 10 minutes to protect ''FNIA''. If any games finish after 7:30, the post-game program can run until 8:00 ET. However, this restriction seems to apply to game footage only; on several occasions Fox has run its post-game offering to 8:00, despite all games ending before 7:30, by airing only panel discussions and interviews in the latter portion of the show. On the other hand, CBS rarely airs any post-game show after its doubleheaders or 4:05 single-games. This is because ''
60 Minutes
''60 Minutes'' is an American television news magazine broadcast on the CBS television network. Debuting in 1968, the program was created by Don Hewitt and Bill Leonard, who chose to set it apart from other news programs by using a unique st ...
'' is one of its signature shows, and CBS makes every effort to start it as close to 7:00 or 7:30—its traditional airtime—as possible.
National games
National broadcasts of marquee matches occur on Thursday, Sunday and Monday nights. NBC has broadcast rights to the opening night
kickoff game and to the Sunday night games. These are televised under a special "
flexible schedule" that allows Sunday afternoon games to be moved to prime-time beginning with Week 5 of the season.
''Sunday Night Football''
NBC has broadcast the marquee "game of the week" nationally since 2006. Before 2006, the "game of the week" was considered to be ''Monday Night Football'' on ABC. However, ESPN
previously aired games on Sunday nights from 1987-2005, and TNT
aired games from 1990-1997.
Thursday night games
Since 2012, a Thursday night game went into effect during every week of the season with the exception of the final week. Each game is aired on the NFL Network (prior to 2021) or Amazon (2022 and on), with the exceptions of the Week 1
NFL Kickoff and Thanksgiving Day games, which are aired on NBC. The season-kickoff game for the 2012 season was moved up a day — to a Wednesday, in order to avoid conflict with
President
President most commonly refers to:
*President (corporate title)
* President (education), a leader of a college or university
*President (government title)
President may also refer to:
Automobiles
* Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese f ...
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, Obama was the first Af ...
's speech at the
Democratic National Convention
The Democratic National Convention (DNC) is a series of presidential nominating conventions held every four years since 1832 by the United States Democratic Party. They have been administered by the Democratic National Committee since the 1852 ...
. Since the NFL tries to avoid scheduling Thursday night games during the season which would require the visiting team to travel more than one time zone (excluding the Week 1 Kickoff), the five teams in the
Pacific Time Zone — the
Las Vegas Raiders
The Las Vegas Raiders are a professional American football team based in the Las Vegas metropolitan area. The Raiders compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) West divi ...
,
Los Angeles Chargers
The Los Angeles Chargers are a professional American football team based in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Chargers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) West division, and ...
,
Los Angeles Rams
The Los Angeles Rams are a professional American football team based in the Greater Los Angeles, Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Rams compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC Wes ...
,
San Francisco 49ers
The San Francisco 49ers (also written as the San Francisco Forty-Niners) are a professional American football team based in the San Francisco Bay Area. The 49ers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the league's National ...
and
Seattle Seahawks
The Seattle Seahawks are a professional American football team based in Seattle. The Seahawks compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) West, which they rejoined in 2002 a ...
— would have more limited scheduling options in years that the
AFC West
The American Football Conference – Western Division or AFC West is one of the four divisions of the American Football Conference (AFC) in the National Football League (NFL). The division comprises the Denver Broncos, Kansas City Chiefs, La ...
and
NFC West
The National Football Conference - Western Division or NFC West is one of the four divisions of the National Football Conference (NFC) in the National Football League (NFL). It currently has four members: the Arizona Cardinals, the Los Ange ...
divisions don't face each other in interconference play. There have been some notable exceptions: the
Kansas City Chiefs
The Kansas City Chiefs are a professional American football team based in Kansas City, Missouri. The Chiefs compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) West division.
The t ...
, who are based in the
Central Time Zone
The North American Central Time Zone (CT) is a time zone in parts of Canada, the United States, Mexico, Central America, some Caribbean Islands, and part of the Eastern Pacific Ocean.
Central Standard Time (CST) is six hours behind Coordina ...
, have played both the Chargers and Raiders on Thursdays; the Rams, who were based in
St. Louis until , played against the 49ers in . Since ''TNF'' started in 2012, the
Dallas Cowboys
The Dallas Cowboys are a professional American football team based in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. The Cowboys compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East divis ...
of the Central Time Zone have occasionally hosted clubs from the Pacific Time Zone on Thanksgiving Day: Dallas hosted the
Oakland Raiders
The Oakland Raiders were a professional American football team that played in Oakland from its founding in 1960 to 1981 and again from 1995 to 2019 before relocating to the Las Vegas metropolitan area where they now play as the Las Vegas Ra ...
in , the
Los Angeles Chargers
The Los Angeles Chargers are a professional American football team based in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Chargers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the American Football Conference (AFC) West division, and ...
in , and hosted the Las Vegas Raiders in . The Detroit Lions, of the Eastern Time Zone, have not hosted a Mountain or Pacific Time Zone team during this time. Each year since 2014, the Thursday Night game the week after Thanksgiving has featured two teams that played on Thanksgiving, effectively giving both teams a full week of practice rather than the short week that most teams have for a Thursday Night game.
In 2014, CBS had simulcast Thursday night games between Weeks 2–8 and televised one of two Saturday games in Week 16, and each Thursday night game was an intra-division game, except for the
Packers–Seahawks Week 1 NBC kickoff and the Cowboys–Bears game in Week 14. The two Saturday games in Week 16 —
Eagles
Eagle is the common name for many large Bird of prey, birds of prey of the family Accipitridae. Eagles belong to several groups of Genus, genera, some of which are closely related. Most of the 68 species of eagle are from Eurasia and Africa. Ou ...
–
Redskins and Chargers–49ers — aired beginning at 4:30 p.m. ET. The 4:30 p.m. ET game was televised by the NFL Network, while the other began shortly after 8:00 p.m. ET, and aired on CBS.
''Monday Night Football''
Between 1970 and 1977, and again since 2003, there has been no Monday night game during the last week of the season. From 1978 until 2002, a season-ending Monday night game was scheduled. The 2003 revision permits the NFL to have all eight teams involved in the Wild Card playoffs to have equal time in preparation, instead of the possibility of one or two teams having a shorter preparation for their playoff game if they were picked to play on Saturday, instead of Sunday. This scenario, in which a team finishing its season on Monday night had a playoff game the following Saturday, never occurred.
Between and , ESPN has opened the season with a ''Monday Night Football'' doubleheader, with a 7:00 p.m. game and a 10:30 p.m. both shown in their entirety nationwide. ESPN2 or ESPNEWS (only in 2012 because ESPN2 was airing an MLB game) started the second game if the game on ESPN was not over by the time the second game had started. However, in Week 1 of the
2018 season, the conclusion of the first game of the doubleheader, Jets–Lions, moved to ESPN2 in order to show the beginning of the Rams–Raiders game on ESPN.
Since , select Monday Night Football games have been simulcast on
ABC,
ESPN2
ESPN2 is an American multinational pay television network owned by ESPN Inc., a joint venture between The Walt Disney Company (which owns a controlling 80% stake) and Hearst Communications (which owns the remaining 20%).
ESPN2 was initially ...
, and
ESPN+
ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...
. While the ABC broadcast is a simulcast of the main ESPN feed, the ESPN2 and ESPN+ feeds have also featured alternate telecasts. The 2020 alternate telecast was hosted by
Rece Davis
Rece Davis (born }) is an American sports television journalist for ESPN/ABC. Davis works as an anchor on ''SportsCenter'' and serves as host of various other programs on the network, including '' College GameDay'' football road show and basket ...
and
Kirk Herbstreit
Kirk Edward Herbstreit (; born August 19, 1969) is an American sportscaster and former college football player. He serves as an analyst for ESPN's '' College GameDay'', a television program covering college football, and he also provides color ...
, while the 2021 version was hosted by
Eli Manning
Elisha Nelson Manning (born January 3, 1981) is a former American football quarterback who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 16 seasons with the New York Giants. A member of the Manning football dynasty, he is the youngest son o ...
and
Peyton Manning
Peyton Williams Manning (born March 24, 1976) is an American former American football, football quarterback who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 18 seasons. Nicknamed "the Sheriff", he spent 14 seasons with the Indianapolis Col ...
and nicknamed the Manningcast.
Local syndication of cable games and anti-siphoning
To maximize television ratings, as well as to protect the NFL's ability to sell television rights collectively, games televised on cable or streaming are blacked out in each of the primary markets of both teams (the
Green Bay Packers
The Green Bay Packers are a professional American football team based in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The Packers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the National Football Conference (NFC) North division. It is the th ...
have two primary markets,
Green Bay and
Milwaukee
Milwaukee ( ), officially the City of Milwaukee, is both the most populous and most densely populated city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, Milwaukee County. With a population of 577,222 at th ...
, a remnant of when they played some home games in Milwaukee each season, see below) under syndicated exclusivity regulations as the league sells via
broadcast syndication a package featuring that team's games.
This station does not need to have affiliate connections with a national broadcaster of NFL games, though owned-and-operated stations of
ABC and
Hearst Television
Hearst Television, Inc. (formerly Hearst-Argyle Television) is a broadcasting company in the United States owned by Hearst Communications. From 1998 to mid-2009, the company traded its common stock on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol ...
(even those Hearst stations not affiliated with ABC, and including their
one independent station in the
Tampa-St. Petersburg market) have first right of refusal for ESPN games due to both ESPN and ABC's common ownership by
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment industry, entertainment conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios (Burbank), Walt Disney Stud ...
(Hearst holds a 20% stake in ESPN). In the past (until 2021), the ABC O&Os have passed on airing the game, opting instead to air the network's Monday night schedule which includes the successful ''
Dancing with the Stars
''Dancing with the Stars'' is the name of various international television series based on the format of the British TV series ''Strictly Come Dancing'', which is distributed by BBC Studios, the commercial arm of the BBC. Currently the form ...
''.
[WGN-TV To Carry Monday Night's Bears/Cowboys Game, Plus Local Pre-Game Show]
''Chicagoland Radio and Media''. Retrieved October 7, 2012. In other markets, stations who are the affiliates of
MyNetworkTV
MyNetworkTV (unofficially abbreviated MyTV, MyNet, MNT or MNTV, and sometimes referred to as My Network) is an American commercial broadcast television syndication service and former television network owned by Fox Corporation, operated by its ...
or
The CW
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in ...
(and, in at least one case, an independent station
[Kwiatkowski, Jane (June 13, 2012)]
Murphy leaving channel 4 for Bills
''The Buffalo News''. Retrieved June 13, 2012.) have out bid more established local broadcasters in some markets. However, the home team's market must be completely served by the station (as opposed to a
low-power station). With
increasing consolidation of local broadcasters in the United States, larger station ownership groups (particularly
Nexstar Media Group
Nexstar Media Group, Inc. is an American publicly traded media company with headquarter offices in Irving, Texas; Midtown Manhattan; and Chicago, Illinois. The company is the largest television station owner in the United States, owning 197 tele ...
) have increasingly cornered the market for these simulcasts.
The NFL's
anti-siphoning regulations affect all cable and streaming games. In the markets of the participating teams, the respective cable channel is blacked out. Cable and streaming games air via
broadcast syndication to an
over-the-air station. Typically, the team's
flagship station for the preseason games will hold such rights, as teams will usually sell the preseason, local non-broadcast television games as one package. Only over-the-air stations in the market of the participating teams (with the Green Bay Packers having two such markets) may bid on this syndicated package. In 2014, CBS affiliates in the primary markets in question have the primary option to NFL Network-only games; if the local affiliate declines the option (as was in Cincinnati), the NFL will implement the same syndicated package rule. In 2016 and 2017, with the ''TNF'' package split between CBS and NBC, this depended on which network produces the game for NFL Network. With Fox taking over the ''TNF'' package in 2018, Fox affiliates will have the primary option of simulcasting NFL Network games. Starting in 2022, the
Amazon Prime Video
Amazon Prime Video, also known simply as Prime Video, is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming and rental service of Amazon offered as a standalone service or as part of Amazon's Prime subscription. The service p ...
subscription service will hold the rights to broadcast ''TNF'' and because of this, the NFL will continue to require these games to be syndicated to the team's local markets.
This led to controversy in , when the
New England Patriots
The New England Patriots are a professional American football team based in the Greater Boston area. They compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) AFC East, East divisio ...
were scheduled to play the
New York Giants
The New York Giants are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Giants compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East divisio ...
at
Giants Stadium
Giants Stadium (sometimes referred to as Giants Stadium at the Meadowlands or The Swamp) was a stadium located in East Rutherford, New Jersey, in the Meadowlands Sports Complex. The venue was open from 1976 to 2010, and it primarily hosted spo ...
in their
regular season finale on the NFL Network, in what was to be a chance to complete the first 16–0 regular season in NFL history. After the
Senate Judiciary Committee
The United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, informally the Senate Judiciary Committee, is a standing committee of 22 U.S. senators whose role is to oversee the Department of Justice (DOJ), consider executive and judicial nomination ...
threatened the NFL's
antitrust exemption if it did not make the game available nationwide, the NFL relented and made the game the first in league history to be simulcast on three networks. The game aired on the NFL Network, as planned; on NBC, which would normally have the rights to prime time games; and, since the away team was an AFC team, on CBS. (
WCVB in Boston holds the rights to the NFL's syndicated package for Patriots games, causing this game to be available on 3 over-the-air stations in the Boston TV market). This however, did not lead to the NFL offering this package to other channels; the games have remained on the NFL Network, although cable coverage of NFL Network has increased in the intervening period.
Under the agreement for the 2014 season between CBS and the NFL Network for ''Thursday Night Football'' simulcasts during the first half of the season, local rights to such games that are not carried by CBS are awarded to the markets' CBS affiliates, rather than syndicated. If the CBS affiliate opts out of the deal, the NFL will offer the package by syndication, typically with the Monday Night package.
The CBS/NFL Network deal was extended for the 2015 season on January 18, 2015.
For the 2016 season, two midseason ''TNF'' games were NFL Network-exclusive but produced by NBC; the NBC affiliates in those markets with teams competing carried those games in-market. With the 2018 move of the package to Fox, the two NFL Network-exclusive games produced by Fox actually varied between NBC and CBS affiliates rather than being exclusive to the Fox stations in each market.
On November 8, 1987, the very first NFL game ever aired on ESPN was played between the
New England Patriots
The New England Patriots are a professional American football team based in the Greater Boston area. They compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) AFC East, East divisio ...
and
New York Giants
The New York Giants are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Giants compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East divisio ...
. Technically, the game was only simulcast in the Boston market, with a separate broadcast produced for the New York market by ESPN sister property
WABC-TV
WABC-TV (channel 7) is a television station in New York City, serving as the flagship of the ABC network. Owned and operated by the network's ABC Owned Television Stations division, the station maintains studios in the Lincoln Square neigh ...
– at the time, WABC's union contract prohibited non-union workers (like those of ESPN) from working on live events broadcast on the station. This marked the only time since the AFL–NFL merger that a regular season game was locally produced for TV. The WABC broadcast featured WABC's own
Corey McPherrin doing play-by-play, and
Frank Gifford
Francis Newton Gifford (August 16, 1930 – August 9, 2015) was an American football player, actor, and television sports commentator. After a 12-year playing career as a halfback and flanker for the New York Giants of the National Footba ...
and
Lynn Swann
Lynn Curtis Swann (born March 7, 1952) is an American former football player, broadcaster, politician, and athletic director, best known for his association with the University of Southern California and the Pittsburgh Steelers. He served on the ...
from ''Monday Night Football'' doing color commentary (Gifford and Swann did not have to travel further for their Monday Night game, which was Seahawks at Jets.).
Saturday NFL games
Under the
Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961
The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 affects Title 15 of the United States Code, Chapter 32 "Telecasting of Professional Sports Contest" (§§ 1291-1295)
Overview
The Sports Broadcasting Act was passed in response to a court decision which ruled ...
, for the NFL to retain its antitrust exemption, professional games are not permitted to air on any television station within a 75-mile radius of any
high school
A secondary school describes an institution that provides secondary education and also usually includes the building where this takes place. Some secondary schools provide both '' lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper seconda ...
or
college
A college ( Latin: ''collegium'') is an educational institution or a constituent part of one. A college may be a degree-awarding tertiary educational institution, a part of a collegiate or federal university, an institution offering ...
game from 6pm on Friday to midnight on Saturday evening until the second weekend of December; effectively, this prevents the NFL from scheduling any games on those days.
Since the 1970 AFL–NFL merger, the NFL has taken an informal approach to scheduling games on Saturdays after the end of the college football season, with the scheduling policy changing many times. From 1970 to 2005, both of the Sunday afternoon broadcast networks (CBS and NBC from 1970–1993, Fox and NBC from 1994–1997, and Fox and CBS from 1998–2005) were given at least two Saturday afternoon national broadcasts in December, with
ESPN
ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...
also airing one or two Saturday game in primetime from 1998 to 2005.
In 2006, the schedule was cut to three Saturday games, which aired in primetime and were televised on the
NFL Network
NFL Network (occasionally abbreviated on-air as NFLN) is an American sports-oriented pay television network owned by the National Football League (NFL) and is part of NFL Media, which also includes NFL.com, NFL Films, NFL Mobile, NFL Now and N ...
in December. In 2008, this was changed to only one Saturday game, still aired in primetime on the NFL Network, which was the policy through 2011. For the 2012 season, ESPN aired the lone Saturday game in primetime. No Saturday game was scheduled in 2013, the first and only time since the 1970 merger that the NFL did not play any regular season games on Saturday.
In 2014, the NFL returned to Saturdays with a Week 16 doubleheader, with the Saturday afternoon game airing on the NFL Network and a Saturday night game airing on
CBS. CBS Sports produced coverage for both games. In 2015, this schedule was modified again to one Saturday night game during both Week 15 and Week 16, these games were cable-only and produced by CBS. In 2016, Christmas fell on a Sunday, so the regional slate of week 16 games aired on Saturday afternoon, with a national game also airing that night, along with a national week 15 Saturday game the previous week, with CBS and
Fox
Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush'').
Twelv ...
producing the regional games and NBC producing the national games for cable.
Since 2018, NFL Network has exclusively aired three or four late-season Saturday games per season. When the schedule is released, five Sunday afternoon games in each of these weeks will be eligible to be moved to Saturday afternoon or evening. The games moving to Saturday are typically announced no later than four weeks prior to game day. Beginning in 2021,
ESPN and ABC will air a Saturday doubleheader during Week 18 featuring games with playoff implications.
The
2021 season will feature six Saturday regular season games (two each in Weeks 15, 16, and 18), equal with the
2001
The September 11 attacks against the United States by Al-Qaeda, which killed 2,977 people and instigated the global war on terror, were a defining event of 2001. The United States led a multi-national coalition in an invasion of Afghanistan ...
and
2003 seasons for the most Saturday games played in a season since the turn of the millennium (excluding years in which Christmas falls on Sunday, and thus the great majority of that week's games are moved to Saturday afternoon).
Several notable games have taken place on Saturdays, including the
New England Patriots
The New England Patriots are a professional American football team based in the Greater Boston area. They compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) AFC East, East divisio ...
' historic comeback from a 22–3 deficit in the fourth quarter against the
New York Giants
The New York Giants are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Giants compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East divisio ...
in 1996, a game the same season between the
Philadelphia Eagles
The Philadelphia Eagles are a professional American football team based in Philadelphia. The Eagles compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East division. The team play ...
and the
New York Jets in which the Eagles won in dramatic fashion over the 1-13 Jets to keep their playoff hopes alive (they would eventually qualify), the final game at
Three Rivers Stadium
Three Rivers Stadium was a multi-purpose stadium located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, from 1970 to 2000. It was home to the Pittsburgh Pirates of Major League Baseball (MLB) and the Pittsburgh Steelers of the National Football League (NFL).
Built ...
featuring the
Pittsburgh Steelers
The Pittsburgh Steelers are a professional American football team based in Pittsburgh. The Steelers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference (AFC) North division. Founded in , the Stee ...
and
Washington Redskins
The Washington Commanders are a professional American football team based in the Washington metropolitan area. The Commanders compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) ...
in 2000, another Patriots-Giants
matchup in 2007 which saw the Patriots complete a 16–0 season and was simulcast on three networks, the last-ever match at
Texas Stadium won by the
Baltimore Ravens
The Baltimore Ravens are a professional American football team based in Baltimore, Maryland. The Ravens compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference (AFC) North division. The team plays it ...
over the
Dallas Cowboys
The Dallas Cowboys are a professional American football team based in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. The Cowboys compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East divis ...
in 2008, a 2012 game between the
Detroit Lions
The Detroit Lions are a professional American football team based in Detroit. The Lions compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) North Division. The team play their home games at For ...
and the
Atlanta Falcons in which
Calvin Johnson
Calvin Johnson Jr., (born September 29, 1985) is an American former football wide receiver who played in the National Football League (NFL) for nine seasons with the Detroit Lions. He played college football at Georgia Tech, where he twice ...
of the Lions set the NFL record for receiving yards in one season, and a 2015 game between the Eagles and the Redskins to decide the NFC East champion.
Flexible scheduling
Since the
2006 season, the NFL has used a "flexible scheduling" system for the last seven weeks of the regular season. This is because by week 11, there are a number of teams that have been eliminated or nearly eliminated from playoff contention. Flex-scheduling ensures that all Sunday night and on the doubleheader network, the late game that is designated as the national game (airs in the majority of markets nationally), have playoff significance, regardless of whether or not both teams are competing for a playoff spot. Two examples of this type of flexing involved the
Carolina Panthers
The Carolina Panthers are a professional American football team based in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Panthers compete in the National Football League (NFL), as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) South division. ...
in
2008
File:2008 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Lehman Brothers went bankrupt following the Subprime mortgage crisis; Cyclone Nargis killed more than 138,000 in Myanmar; A scene from the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing ...
and
2009
File:2009 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The vertical stabilizer of Air France Flight 447 is pulled out from the Atlantic Ocean; Barack Obama becomes the first African American to become President of the United States; 2009 Iran ...
. In the first instance, the
Panthers and
New York Giants
The New York Giants are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Giants compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East divisio ...
saw a late season game flexed due to the winner of that matchup clinching the NFC's top seed and home-field advantage throughout the playoffs. The next season, an out-of-contention
Panthers team hosted the 11–2
Minnesota Vikings
The Minnesota Vikings are a professional American football team based in Minneapolis. They compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the National Football Conference (NFC) North division. Founded in 1960 as an expansio ...
, who had a chance to improve their playoff positioning and take the top seed in the NFC playoffs; hence, this game was flexed despite Carolina's 5–8 record. Sometimes, games will be flexed due to a team's success; for instance, the 2007 matchup between the
New England Patriots
The New England Patriots are a professional American football team based in the Greater Boston area. They compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) AFC East, East divisio ...
and
Buffalo Bills
The Buffalo Bills are a professional American football team based in the Buffalo metropolitan area. The Bills compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) East division ...
at
Ralph Wilson Stadium was flexed due to the Patriots' potential run at an undefeated regular season that they eventually completed.
This system also allows teams that enjoy unexpected success to acquire a prime time spot that was not on their original schedule. Thanksgiving games and all games airing on cable channels (Monday, Thursday, and Saturday games) are fixed in place and cannot be changed to Sunday night, as are games during Christmas weekend whenever Christmas Day falls on a Sunday, as it was in 2011 (most games are played on Christmas Eve Saturday instead). It also increases the potential for teams to play on consecutive Sunday nights, as the
2007 Patriots,
2007 Redskins, the
2008 Giants the
2012 49ers, the
2013 Broncos,
2015 Cardinals, the
2016 Cowboys, the
2018 Chiefs,
2018 Vikings,
2018 Rams, and the
2022 Chargers did (the Patriots hosted the
Philadelphia Eagles
The Philadelphia Eagles are a professional American football team based in Philadelphia. The Eagles compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East division. The team play ...
the week following the second matchup with the Bills as scheduled, the Redskins were flexed into a matchup with the
Giants and played the
Vikings
Vikings ; non, víkingr is the modern name given to seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway and Sweden),
who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded and se ...
in a regularly scheduled matchup the week after, and the Giants hosted the Panthers one week after playing the
Dallas Cowboys
The Dallas Cowboys are a professional American football team based in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. The Cowboys compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East divis ...
in
Texas Stadium. The 49ers played the
Seahawks in Seattle one week after playing at the
Patriots. The Broncos were flexed into a matchup with the Chiefs and then playing on the road against the Patriots. The Vikings were flexed into a matchup with the Bears then hosted the Packers the next week. The Rams were flexed into a matchup also with the Bears then hosted the Eagles the next week.)
Under the system, Sunday games in the affected weeks in the
Eastern and
Central
Central is an adjective usually referring to being in the center of some place or (mathematical) object.
Central may also refer to:
Directions and generalised locations
* Central Africa, a region in the centre of Africa continent, also known a ...
time zones will tentatively have the start time of 1:00 p.m. ET (10:00 am PT). Those played in the
Mountain
A mountain is an elevated portion of the Earth's crust, generally with steep sides that show significant exposed bedrock. Although definitions vary, a mountain may differ from a plateau in having a limited summit area, and is usually higher t ...
or
Pacific
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...
time zones will have the tentative start time of 4:05/4:25 p.m. ET (1:05/1:25 p.m. PT). Also, there will be one game provisionally scheduled for the 8:20 p.m. ET slot. On the Tuesday twelve days before the games (possibly sooner), the league will move one game to the prime time slot (or keep its original choice), and possibly move one or more 1:00 p.m. slotted games to the 4:00 p.m. slot.
Fox and CBS each may protect a total of five Sunday afternoon games, not more than one per week, during weeks 11–17 and NBC selects which game they want to air. For example, in 2011, NBC wanted a late season game between the
Denver Broncos
The Denver Broncos are a professional American football franchise based in Denver. The Broncos compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) West division. The team is headquar ...
and
New England Patriots
The New England Patriots are a professional American football team based in the Greater Boston area. They compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) AFC East, East divisio ...
which featured
Tim Tebow as the Broncos quarterback. CBS protected the game and NBC got a game featuring the
San Diego Chargers
The San Diego Chargers were a professional American football team that played in San Diego from 1961 until the end of the 2016 season, before relocating to Los Angeles, where the franchise had played its inaugural 1960 season. The team is now ...
instead. Networks have the option of waiving protection to allow for a Sunday night airing, as happened with a game between the unbeaten
Kansas City Chiefs
The Kansas City Chiefs are a professional American football team based in Kansas City, Missouri. The Chiefs compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) West division.
The t ...
and one-loss
Denver Broncos
The Denver Broncos are a professional American football franchise based in Denver. The Broncos compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) West division. The team is headquar ...
in Week 11 of the 2013 season. The contest was protected by CBS, which would have to air it in the regional 4:05 p.m. timeslot because the game was in Denver and the network did not have doubleheader rights that week. CBS thus allowed NBC to pick up the telecast for a nationwide broadcast.
Neither CBS or Fox can protect games in week 18. In years when Christmas falls on Sunday (like in 2016) or on Monday (like in 2017), the NFL schedules its main slate of afternoon games on Christmas Eve (which would fall on Saturday or Sunday) without a prime time game, as NBC's game would be moved to Christmas night (
see below). Thus, Sunday Night game flexible scheduling can not occur in week 16; NBC is then given flexible scheduling in week 10 instead. However, the other two types of flexible scheduling changes—moving a game from early to late, or changing networks—is still possible during such weeks. The NFL went around the flexible scheduling procedure prohibition in the 2016 NFL season where Christmas falls on a Sunday by scheduling two Sunday games at 4:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. ET, respectively.
During the last week of the season, the league could reschedule games as late as six days before the contests so that as many of the television networks as possible will be able to broadcast a game that has major playoff implications, and so that several division races or Wild Card spots are on the line at the same time. The week 18 game on Sunday night is decided exclusively by the NFL; networks cannot protect or choose during the final week. For this final Sunday Night contest, the league prefers to flex-in a matchup in which at least one team must win in order to qualify for the playoffs, regardless of what happens in the other week 18 games. Since 2010 when the NFL began scheduling only divisional matchups in the final week, it is possible an intradivisional game that appeared on national TV previously could be selected again. The NFL will only select such a game if there is no other suitable option. This example happened in the
2011 season concerning matchups between the
Dallas Cowboys
The Dallas Cowboys are a professional American football team based in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. The Cowboys compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East divis ...
and
New York Giants
The New York Giants are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Giants compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East divisio ...
. In week 14, both teams played a game with major playoff implications that could have all but eliminated the Giants from playoff contention with a loss. Instead, that game marked the start of a four-game winning streak to end the season which included a game where the Giants eliminated the
Eagles
Eagle is the common name for many large Bird of prey, birds of prey of the family Accipitridae. Eagles belong to several groups of Genus, genera, some of which are closely related. Most of the 68 species of eagle are from Eurasia and Africa. Ou ...
from playoff contention (despite a win over the Cowboys) with a win over the
New York Jets. This win flexed the following week's matchup, where the Giants hosted the Cowboys, into NBC's slot, which determined the NFC East champion.
Individual teams may make no more than four appearances on NBC's ''Sunday Night Football'' package during the season. Only three teams may make as many as six prime time appearances (Sunday night, Monday night, Thursday night, and Saturday night combined). The remaining teams may make a maximum of five prime time appearances. In addition, there are no restrictions amongst intra-division games being "flexed."
In the
2014 NFL season
The 2014 NFL season was the 95th season in the history of the National Football League (NFL) and the 49th of the Super Bowl era. The season began on Thursday, September 4, 2014, with the annual kickoff game featuring the defending Super Bowl ...
, a related policy known as "cross-flexing" became available, where games can now be swapped between CBS and Fox, regardless of conference, in order to improve balance between the two networks, and expand the distribution of noteworthy games.
A notable example occurred in the final week of the season, where a game featuring the Atlanta Falcons hosting the Carolina Panthers playing to clinch the NFC South division (which was tentatively scheduled for Fox with a 1:00 p.m. kickoff) was cross-flexed to CBS and moved to a 4:25 p.m kickoff, in order to give the network a late-afternoon game with playoff implications (since Fox was also, by virtue of its package, to air a game between Detroit and Green Bay that would determine the NFC North champion, and the AFC North title game between Cincinnati and Pittsburgh had been flexed to ''Sunday Night Football'').
In the 2020 offseason, the NFL queried its teams on the possibility of expanding flexible scheduling to ''Monday Night Football''. No consensus was achieved on whether or not such an expansion would be viable, as travel and lodging reservations are set in advance and would require visiting teams to book hotels for an extra day because of the uncertainty such a flex option would entail. Flexible scheduling would not take effect until ''Monday Night Football's'' next contract begins in 2022.
In 2020, because of numerous pandemic-related issues that led to CBS losing a 1 PM (Pittsburgh vs Tennessee) and a 4:25 PM (New England at Kansas City) game during Week 4, the NFL used the flexible schedule rule to move Indianapolis at Chicago from 1 PM to 4:25 PM.
Holiday games
Thanksgiving Day games
Thanksgiving Day
Thanksgiving is a national holiday celebrated on various dates in the United States, Canada, Grenada, Saint Lucia, Liberia, and unofficially in countries like Brazil and Philippines. It is also observed in the Netherlander town of Leiden ...
contests have been held since before the league's inception. The
Detroit Lions
The Detroit Lions are a professional American football team based in Detroit. The Lions compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) North Division. The team play their home games at For ...
have hosted a game every Thanksgiving since 1934 (with the exception of 1939–1944 due to the "
Franksgiving
__NOTOC__
In 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved the Thanksgiving holiday one week earlier than normal, believing that doing so would help bolster retail sales during one of the final years of the Great Depression. This led to much uphea ...
" confusion and World War II), and they have been nationally televised since 1953. The first
color television
Color television or Colour television is a television transmission technology that includes color information for the picture, so the video image can be displayed in color on the television set. It improves on the monochrome or black-and-white ...
broadcast of an NFL regular season game was the 1965 Thanksgiving contest between the Lions and
Baltimore Colts
The Baltimore Colts were a professional American football team that played in Baltimore from its founding in 1953 to 1984. The team now plays in Indianapolis, as the Indianapolis Colts. The team was named for Baltimore's history of horse breed ...
. In 1966, the NFL introduced an annual game hosted by the
Dallas Cowboys
The Dallas Cowboys are a professional American football team based in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. The Cowboys compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East divis ...
, which has been played every year except in 1975 and 1977 when the
St. Louis Cardinals hosted a match instead. However, fans both inside and outside St. Louis did not respond well to an NFL fixture on Thanksgiving, and thus Dallas resumed hosting the game in 1978.
When the AFL began holding annual Thanksgiving Day games, the league chose a different model, circulating the game among several cities. During the 1967–69 seasons, two Thanksgiving AFL games were televised each year.
After the 1970 merger, the NFL decided to keep only the traditional Detroit and Dallas games. Due to the broadcast contracts in place since 1970, three NFC teams play on Thanksgiving, as opposed to only one AFC outfit. During even years, the Lions play their Thanksgiving game against an AFC team, and thus are televised by the network holding the AFC package (NBC and later CBS since 1998); the Cowboys host an NFC team and are shown by the network with the NFC package (CBS and later Fox since 1994). During odd years, Dallas hosts an AFC team and Detroit plays an NFC opponent (usually another NFC North team, and often the Green Bay Packers, who draw high television ratings). Every decade or so, this even-odd rotation was reversed, Detroit hosting an NFC team in even years and an AFC team in odd years, Dallas hosting an AFC team in even years and an NFC team in odd years. Detroit is always the early broadcast and Dallas the mid-afternoon broadcast.
Following the introduction of ''Thursday Night Football'' in 2006, a third Thanksgiving game was added, a primetime game hosted by one of the remaining 30 NFL teams each year. While the first game featured two AFC teams, conference affiliation has varied since. Starting in 2012, the prime time Thanksgiving game has aired on NBC. In the future, the NFL may use flexible scheduling to allow the Lions or Cowboys to host a prime-time game, provided an
Eastern time zone
The Eastern Time Zone (ET) is a time zone encompassing part or all of 23 states in the eastern part of the United States, parts of eastern Canada, the state of Quintana Roo in Mexico, Panama, Colombia, mainland Ecuador, Peru, and a sma ...
team is given the early (12:30 p.m.) slot.
Starting in 2014, changes to the NFL television contract allow either traditional Thanksgiving game to prime time (and NBC) and schedule an AFC game in either window to accommodate CBS, while Fox would get the other traditional game with Dallas or Detroit; to date, this has never happened. Cross-flexing also liberated CBS and Fox from their usual conference affiliation on Thursdays; thus Dallas and Detroit both hosted NFC opponents in 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2018 (in 2014, 2015, and 2018, the prime time game also featured two NFC franchises, so the AFC was completely shut out of the holiday those years). Fox has yet to broadcast an AFC team on Thanksgiving.
Christmas and Christmas Eve games
In recent years, the NFL has generally scheduled games on Christmas only if it falls on a day normally used for games (Saturday, Sunday, Monday). If Christmas falls on a Sunday, most of the games are to be played on the preceding day, Saturday, December 24, with two games scheduled for Christmas Night to be broadcast nationally (which most recently happened in ).
The first NFL games played on December 25 came during the
1971 season. The first two games of the Divisional Playoff Round that year were held on Christmas Day. The first game that day was between
Dallas Cowboys
The Dallas Cowboys are a professional American football team based in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. The Cowboys compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East divis ...
and the
Minnesota Vikings
The Minnesota Vikings are a professional American football team based in Minneapolis. They compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the National Football Conference (NFC) North division. Founded in 1960 as an expansio ...
. The second of the two contests played that day, the
Miami Dolphins
The Miami Dolphins are a professional American football team based in the Miami metropolitan area. They compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member team of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) East division. The team pl ...
versus the
Kansas City Chiefs
The Kansas City Chiefs are a professional American football team based in Kansas City, Missouri. The Chiefs compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) West division.
The t ...
, ended up being
the longest game in NFL history. The league received numerous complaints due to the length of this game, reportedly because it caused havoc with Christmas dinners around the nation. As a result, the NFL decided to not schedule any Christmas Day matches for the next 17 seasons.
In 1976 and 1977, the last two years before the advent of the 16-game schedule and expanded playoffs, the NFL came up with different approaches to avoid Christmas play. In 1976, when Christmas fell on a Saturday, the league moved the start of the regular season up one week to Sunday, September 12. The divisional playoffs were held on the weekend of December 18 and 19, leaving the conference championship games on Sunday, December 26.
Super Bowl XI
Super Bowl XI was an American football game between the American Football Conference (AFC) champion 1976 Oakland Raiders season, Oakland Raiders and the National Football Conference (NFC) champion 1976 Minnesota Vikings season, Minnesota Vikings ...
was played on January 9, 1977, the earliest it has ever been held. In 1977, with Christmas on Sunday, the NFL split the divisional playoffs, and for the only time since the AFL–NFL merger, each conference held both divisional playoff games the same day (AFC Saturday, December 24 and NFC Monday, December 26), ostensibly not to give one team a two-day rest advantage over the other for the conference championship games. Since two of the venues were in the Western United States, it was not possible to have regional coverage in both time slots on either day.
The NFL continued to avoid Christmas even after it started to increase the regular season and the playoffs. The league expanded to a 16-game regular season and a 10-team playoff tournament in 1978, but it was not until 1982 that the regular season ended after Christmas, due to the players' strike. In 1989, the NFL tried another Christmas Day game, with the
Cincinnati Bengals
The Cincinnati Bengals are a professional American football team based in Cincinnati. The Bengals compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) North division. The club's home ...
hosted by the
Minnesota Vikings
The Minnesota Vikings are a professional American football team based in Minneapolis. They compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the National Football Conference (NFC) North division. Founded in 1960 as an expansio ...
, but it was a 9:00 p.m. ET ''
Monday Night Football
''ESPN Monday Night Football'' (abbreviated as ''MNF'' and also known as ''ESPN Monday Night Football on ABC'' for simulcasts) is an American live television broadcast of weekly National Football League (NFL) games currently airing on ESPN, A ...
'' contest, thereby not conflicting with family dinners. In the years since, the NFL has played an occasional late-afternoon or night game on the holiday but there has not been a Christmas Day game starting earlier than 4:30 p.m. ET since 1971.
There have also been several games played on Christmas Eve over the years, including an
Oakland Raiders
The Oakland Raiders were a professional American football team that played in Oakland from its founding in 1960 to 1981 and again from 1995 to 2019 before relocating to the Las Vegas metropolitan area where they now play as the Las Vegas Ra ...
–
Baltimore Colts
The Baltimore Colts were a professional American football team that played in Baltimore from its founding in 1953 to 1984. The team now plays in Indianapolis, as the Indianapolis Colts. The team was named for Baltimore's history of horse breed ...
playoff contest in 1977 which culminated in a play known as "
Ghost to the Post
Ghost to the Post is a significant play in NFL history. It refers to a 42-yard pass from Ken Stabler to Dave Casper, nicknamed "The Ghost" after Casper the Friendly Ghost, that set up a game-tying field goal in the final seconds of regulation in ...
". These games have typically been played during the afternoon out of deference to the holiday.
The broadcasting contract to begin in 2022 will allow Fox to air games on Christmas Day if the schedule allows for it. However, the 2022 season is the only season when Christmas falls on a Sunday during the entirety of the media rights deal, so all three Sunday networks will have a single game each.
New Year's games
The NFL only stages games on New Year's Day when it falls on a Sunday or Monday. Historically, this was in deference to the numerous
college football bowl games traditionally held on New Year's Day; in recent years, New Year's Day has consistently fallen in the last week of the NFL's regular season, and the league's policy is to play all of the last games of the week on one day (Sunday, which, if it falls on January 1, typically preempts the bowl games on that day, as well as the
NHL Winter Classic
The NHL Winter Classic (french: La Classique hivernale de la LNH) is an annual regular season outdoor ice hockey game played in the National Hockey League (NHL) on or around New Year's Day, generally in a football or baseball stadium in an area ...
, to be played on Monday, January 2) to ensure an equal amount of rest heading into the playoffs. In years when January 1 falls on a Monday, all 32 teams will play on New Year's Eve.
The AFL played its
first league championship game on January 1, 1961. Thereafter, pro football has been played on New Year's Day in 1967 (the 1966
NFL
The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the major ...
and
AFL Championship Games), in 1978 (the
1977 NFC and AFC Championship Games), in 1984 (the
1983 NFC and AFC Divisional Playoff Games), in 1989 (the
1988 NFC and AFC Divisional Playoff Games), in 1995 (the second half of the
1994 NFC and AFC Wild Card Games), and in 2006, 2012, and 2017 (the final weekend of the
2005
File:2005 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico; the Funeral of Pope John Paul II is held in Vatican City; "Me at the zoo", the first video ever to be uploaded to YouTube; Eris (dwarf planet), Er ...
,
2011, and
2016 regular seasons), with scheduling likely for 2023 and again in 2034.
Other holidays
*The NFL scheduled ''Monday Night Football'' games on Labor Day in the past, but has not done so since 2000, as it was determined that games during the Labor Day weekend were the lowest-rated of the season. Currently, Labor Day weekend serves as a league-wide bye week between the final preseason game and the start of the regular season.
*A ''Monday Night Football'' game is always scheduled on
Columbus Day
Columbus Day is a national holiday in many countries of the Americas and elsewhere, and a federal holiday in the United States, which officially celebrates the anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the Americas on October 12, 1492 ...
, a federal holiday not universally celebrated by all states.
*The NFL only plays on
Halloween
Halloween or Hallowe'en (less commonly known as Allhalloween, All Hallows' Eve, or All Saints' Eve) is a celebration geography of Halloween, observed in many countries on 31 October, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Saints' Day. ...
or
Veterans Day
Veterans Day (originally known as Armistice Day) is a federal holidays in the United States, federal holiday in the United States observed annually on November 11, for honoring Veteran, military veterans of the United States Armed Forces (who ...
if the holiday falls on a day in which football is normally played (Thursday, Sunday, or Monday).
*The NFL has one ''Monday Night Football'' game during the Wild Card round of the playoffs. This game would sometimes correspond with
Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Blackout policies
Since
1973
Events January
* January 1 - The United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland and Denmark 1973 enlargement of the European Communities, enter the European Economic Community, which later becomes the European Union.
* January 15 – Vietnam War: ...
, the NFL has maintained a blackout policy that states that a home game cannot be televised locally if it is not sold out 72 hours prior to its start time. Before that, NFL games were blacked out in the home team's market even if the game was a sellout. The NFL is the only
major professional sports league in North America that requires teams to sell out in order to broadcast a game on television locally, after
INDYCAR
INDYCAR, LLC, is an American-based auto racing sanctioning body for Indy car racing and other disciplines of open wheel car racing. The organization sanctions five racing series: the premier IndyCar Series with its centerpiece the Indianapo ...
lifted the blackout of the
Indianapolis 500
The Indianapolis 500, formally known as the Indianapolis 500-Mile Race, and commonly called the Indy 500, is an annual automobile race held at Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS) in Speedway, Indiana, United States, an enclave suburb of India ...
in the local market for the 2016 edition.
Before 1973, the lone exception to the blackout rule occurred in
1970
Events
January
* January 1 – Unix time epoch reached at 00:00:00 UTC.
* January 5 – The 7.1 Tonghai earthquake shakes Tonghai County, Yunnan province, China, with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (''Extreme''). Between 10,000 and 1 ...
when the Giants and Jets played at
Shea Stadium
Shea Stadium (), formally known as William A. Shea Municipal Stadium, was a multi-purpose stadium in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, Queens, New York City. . The NFL allowed the game to be broadcast by
WCBS so Giants fans would not be denied to opportunity to see an away game on their local station (that same season,
Raiders
Raider(s) may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* Paul Revere & the Raiders, an American rock band
* "Raider", a track from the 1969 album ''Farewell Aldebaran'', by Judy Henske and Jerry Yester
* "Raiders", a track from the 1987 album ''Young an ...
owner
Al Davis
Allen Davis (July 4, 1929 – October 8, 2011) was an American football coach and executive. He was the principal owner and general manager of the Oakland Raiders of the National Football League (NFL) for 39 years, from 1972 until his death in ...
enforced the blackout of his team's regular season finale vs. the
49ers, even though the NFL granted CBS affiliate
KPIX permission to telecast the game in the Bay Area).
Furthermore, the NFL is the only network that imposes an
anti-siphoning rule in all teams' local markets; The NFL sells
syndication rights of each team's Thursday and Monday night games to a local over-the-air station in each local market. The respective cable station must be blacked out when that team is playing the said game.
In the other leagues, nationally televised games are often blacked out on the national networks they are airing on in their local markets, but they can still be seen on their local
regional sports network
In the United States and Canada, a regional sports network (RSN) is a cable television channel (many of which are also distributed on direct broadcast satellite services) that presents sports programming to a local market or geographical region. ...
that normally has their local broadcasting rights.
Until September 2014, the NFL blackout rules were sanctioned by the
Federal Communications Commission
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisd ...
(FCC), which enforced rules requiring
cable and
satellite
A satellite or artificial satellite is an object intentionally placed into orbit in outer space. Except for passive satellites, most satellites have an electricity generation system for equipment on board, such as solar panels or radioiso ...
providers to not distribute any sports telecast that had been blacked out by a broadcast television station within their market of service. On September 9, 2014, ''
USA Today
''USA Today'' (stylized in all uppercase) is an American daily middle-market newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth on September 15, 1982, the newspaper operates from Gannett's corporate headquarters in Tysons, Virg ...
'' published an editorial from FCC chairman
Tom Wheeler, who stated that "sports blackout rules are obsolete and have to go", and that he was submitting a proposal to "get rid of the FCC's blackout rules once and for all", to be voted on by the agency's members on September 30 of that year. On September 30, 2014, the Commission voted unanimously to repeal the FCC's blackout rules. However, the removal of these rules are, to an extent, purely symbolic; the NFL can still enforce its blackout policies on a contractual basis with
television network
A television network or television broadcaster is a telecommunications network for distribution of television program content, where a central operation provides programming to many television stations or pay television providers. Until the mid- ...
s, stations, and service providers, a process made feasible by the large amount of leverage the league exerts upon its media partners.
Ultimately, no games would be blacked out at all during the season.
[ On March 23, 2015, the NFL's owners voted to suspend the blackout rules for , meaning that all games will be televised in their home markets, regardless of ticket sales.] The blackout rule was again suspended for .
However, the NFL's syndication exclusivity
Syndication exclusivity (also known as syndex) is a federal law () implemented by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the United States that is designed to protect a local television station's rights to syndicated television programs b ...
rule was still in effect through the 2019-20 season.
Commercial breaks
During each half of a network-televised game, there are nine prescribed commercial breaks following the official kickoff. Two are firmly scheduled, and seven others are worked in during breaks in the play.
Pre-scheduled commercial breaks:
*The end of the first (or third) quarter
*The two-minute warning of the second (or fourth) quarter
Other instances used for commercial breaks (seven total required per half):
*A timeout called by either team
*Instant replay stoppage
*Game stoppage after a score
*Game stoppage after a kickoff or punt (excluding the opening kickoff of each half)
*Game stoppage after a turnover
*Injury timeout
Two commercial breaks during the typical 12-minute halftime period are considered separate.
Networks are more apt to front-load their commercials in the first and third quarters, to prevent an overrun in the second and fourth quarters respectively. However, in the event that at least one early-window game is running long (after 4:25 p.m. ET) on the doubleheader network, the network will normally hold its commercials for the late window until all audiences have joined the late games, to ensure maximum coverage for its advertisers. In the rare event that the first quarter of a late game ends before all early games on that network have ended, the network may either take a break consisting entirely of network promos / PSA
PSA, PsA, Psa, or psa may refer to:
Biology and medicine
* Posterior spinal artery
* Primary systemic amyloidosis, a disease caused by the accumulation of abnormal proteins
* Prostate-specific antigen, an enzyme used as a blood tracer for prost ...
s, or not take a break at all during the between-quarters timeout, and those commercials are rescheduled for later in the game.
If a team calls a timeout and the network decides to use it for a commercial break, a representative from the broadcast crew stationed on the sidelines wearing orange sleeves makes a crossing motion with his hands to alert the officials. The referee declares it a "two-minute timeout."
Once a broadcast has fulfilled the seven "random" breaks, game stoppages are no longer needed for commercials. The orange sleeve will hold his hands down in a twirl motion to alert the officials. If a team calls a timeout, the referee will declare it a "30-second timeout."
Since the nine total commercial breaks for the second half are to be finished prior to the end of regulation, commercial breaks are rarely needed in overtime situations, apart from a break immediately after the end of regulation and a break at the two-minute warning, should the overtime period reach that point. Commercials for these purposes are sometimes pre-sold on an if-needed basis (such as the specialized AIG "overtime" ads often seen during the early 2000s). In many cases, overtime periods are conducted without any commercials. By definition, a game that has entered overtime is tied, and so the game is still undecided, thus increasing the appeal of the given game. This also allows the extended broadcast to finish in a timely manner. In cases of long overtime periods, networks have been known to have a commercial break during a lengthy injury time out and in the regular season the two-minute warning of the overtime period. During postseason play, the very rare instances of a second overtime will feature a commercial between periods. Overtimes in the postseason are treated as if a new game has started, meaning most of the regular season commercial break rules are followed.
Beginning in the 2017 season, the ten breaks were reduced to nine per half. Networks are now required to have four breaks per quarter, along with the break after the first (or third) quarter, with each break extended by 30 seconds from 1:50 to 2:20. Also, commercial breaks are no longer permitted after kickoffs (except in the case of an extended stoppage in play after the kickoff, such as an injury), abolishing the quirk where a break occurs twice—once after a score, and then a second break on an ensuing kickoff. The break will only occur after the score.
Broadcasting history & impact
The NFL, along with boxing
Boxing (also known as "Western boxing" or "pugilism") is a combat sport in which two people, usually wearing protective gloves and other protective equipment such as hand wraps and mouthguards, throw punches at each other for a predetermine ...
and professional wrestling
Professional wrestling is a form of theater that revolves around staged wrestling matches. The mock combat is performed in a ring similar to the kind used in boxing, and the dramatic aspects of pro wrestling may be performed both in the ring or ...
(before the latter publicly became known as a staged sport), was a pioneer of sports broadcasting
The broadcasting of sports events (also known as a sportscast) is the live coverage of sports as a television program, on radio, and other broadcasting media. It usually involves one or more sports commentators describing events as they happen ...
during a time when baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding ...
and college football were more popular than professional football. Due to the NFL understanding television at an earlier time, it was able to surpass Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL) ...
in the 1960s as the most popular sport in the United States.
Modern popularity
''NBC Sunday Night Football
''NBC Sunday Night Football'' (abbreviated as ''SNF'') is an American weekly television broadcast of National Football League (NFL) games on NBC and Peacock (streaming service), Peacock in the United States. It began airing on August 6, 2006, wit ...
'' became the only second regular live
Live may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Films
* ''Live!'' (2007 film), 2007 American film
* ''Live'' (2014 film), a 2014 Japanese film
*'' ''Live'' (Apocalyptica DVD)
Music
* Live (band), American alternative rock band
* List of album ...
prime time television program in U.S. history to emerge as the most watched overall U.S. television series, after ending Fox's ''American Idol
''American Idol'' is an American singing competition television series created by Simon Fuller, produced by Fremantle North America and 19 Entertainment, and distributed by Fremantle North America. It aired on Fox from June 11, 2002, to A ...
's'' record of eight consecutive seasons on hold of the rank in the 2011–12 season. The series has held this rank every season since, except in 2013
File:2013 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: Edward Snowden becomes internationally famous for leaking classified NSA wiretapping information; Typhoon Haiyan kills over 6,000 in the Philippines and Southeast Asia; The Dhaka garment ...
, 2014
File:2014 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Stocking up supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE) for the Western African Ebola virus epidemic; Citizens examining the ruins after the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping; Bundles of wat ...
and 2018
File:2018 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2018 Winter Olympics opening ceremony in PyeongChang, South Korea; Protests erupt following the Assassination of Jamal Khashoggi; March for Our Lives protests take place across the United ...
when CBS shows ''NCIS NCIS or N.C.I.S. may refer to:
Law enforcement
* National Criminal Intelligence Service, the predecessor to the Serious Organised Crime Agency of the United Kingdom
* Naval Criminal Investigative Service, a United States law enforcement and intelli ...
'' and ''The Big Bang Theory
''The Big Bang Theory'' is an American television sitcom created by Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady, both of whom served as executive producers on the series, along with Steven Molaro, all of whom also served as head writers. It premiered on CBS ...
'', and ABC show '' Roseanne'', respectively earned the title. As of , Super Bowl XLIX
Super Bowl XLIX was an American football game played to determine the champions of the National Football League (NFL) for the 2014 season. The American Football Conference (AFC) champion New England Patriots defeated the National Football Co ...
on NBC in 2015 remains the most watched telecast by average in U.S. history, attracting 115 million viewers for both halves of the game. Meanwhile, Super Bowl LI
Super Bowl LI was an American football game played at NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas, on February 5, 2017, to determine the champion of the National Football League (NFL) for the 2016 season. The American Football Conference (AFC) champion Ne ...
on Fox in 2017 remains the most watched telecast on peak conclusion in U.S. history, drawing 172 million viewers (more than half of the U.S. population of 340 million that same year) in the league's first overtime
Overtime is the amount of time someone works beyond normal working hours. The term is also used for the pay received for this time. Normal hours may be determined in several ways:
*by custom (what is considered healthy or reasonable by society) ...
period ever for a Super Bowl.
In November 2017, ratings for the first seven weeks declined by 5% compared to the same period in 2016; and decreased by 15% when compared to the same period in 2015, a strong season. Although ratings for the NFL have declined steadily after the Super Bowl in 2015, the latter remains the only program on U.S. television to have attracted at least 100 million viewers on a single night annually since the 1983 series finale of ''M*A*S*H
''M*A*S*H'' (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital) is an American media franchise consisting of a series of novels, a film, several television series, plays, and other properties, and based on the semi-autobiographical fiction of Richard Hooker (auth ...
'' on CBS. The NFL telecasts are known for their relative stability in their TV ratings in the United States since the beginning of the 21st century. Since 2010
File:2010 Events Collage New.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2010 Chile earthquake was one of the strongest recorded in history; The Eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland disrupts air travel in Europe; A scene from the opening ceremony of ...
, except 2019
File:2019 collage v1.png, From top left, clockwise: Hong Kong protests turn to widespread riots and civil disobedience; House of Representatives votes to adopt articles of impeachment against Donald Trump; CRISPR gene editing first used to experim ...
and 2021
File:2021 collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: the James Webb Space Telescope was launched in 2021; Protesters in Yangon, Myanmar following the coup d'état; A civil demonstration against the October 2021 coup in Sudan; Crowd shortly after t ...
, the annual Super Bowl telecasts (including the halftime shows) have regularly attracted more than 100 million viewers in the United States alone, making it the only broadcast in U.S. television history to exceed the said annual viewership threshold for at least 10 years overall.
Coverage style changes over time
The style of pro football broadcasting has seen several changes since the 1990s, including female hosts and sideline reporters, visual first-down markers, advanced graphics, new multi-camera angles, and high definition telecasts. The most recent contract extensions have, for the first time, allowed the networks to broadcast games on the Internet.
List of NFL television contracts
List of NFL network broadcasters past & present
Current English-language broadcasters:
*NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters ...
**1939
This year also marks the start of the Second World War, the largest and deadliest conflict in human history.
Events
Below, the events of World War II have the "WWII" prefix.
January
* January 1
** Third Reich
*** Jews are forbidde ...
, 1955
Events January
* January 3 – José Ramón Guizado becomes president of Panama.
* January 17 – , the first nuclear-powered submarine, puts to sea for the first time, from Groton, Connecticut.
* January 18– 20 – Battle of Yiji ...
–1963
Events January
* January 1 – Bogle–Chandler case: Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation scientist Dr. Gilbert Bogle and Mrs. Margaret Chandler are found dead (presumed poisoned), in bushland near the Lane Co ...
: (NFL)
**1965
Events January–February
* January 14 – The Prime Minister of Northern Ireland and the Taoiseach of the Republic of Ireland meet for the first time in 43 years.
* January 20
** Lyndon B. Johnson is Second inauguration of Lyndo ...
–1969
This year is notable for Apollo 11's first landing on the moon.
Events January
* January 4 – The Government of Spain hands over Ifni to Morocco.
* January 5
** Ariana Afghan Airlines Flight 701 crashes into a house on its approach to ...
: (AFL)
**1970
Events
January
* January 1 – Unix time epoch reached at 00:00:00 UTC.
* January 5 – The 7.1 Tonghai earthquake shakes Tonghai County, Yunnan province, China, with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (''Extreme''). Between 10,000 and 1 ...
–1997
File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; ''Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of ...
: (AFC – Sundays, Thanksgiving, two Saturdays)
***1970
Events
January
* January 1 – Unix time epoch reached at 00:00:00 UTC.
* January 5 – The 7.1 Tonghai earthquake shakes Tonghai County, Yunnan province, China, with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (''Extreme''). Between 10,000 and 1 ...
–1983
The year 1983 saw both the official beginning of the Internet and the first mobile cellular telephone call.
Events January
* January 1 – The migration of the ARPANET to TCP/IP is officially completed (this is considered to be the beginning ...
: All AFC playoff games, Super Bowl every two years
***1984
Events
January
* January 1 – The Bornean Sultanate of Brunei gains full independence from the United Kingdom, having become a British protectorate in 1888.
* January 7 – Brunei becomes the sixth member of the Association of Southeast As ...
–1989
File:1989 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The Cypress structure collapses as a result of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, killing motorists below; The proposal document for the World Wide Web is submitted; The Exxon Valdez oil tanker ru ...
: All AFC playoff games, Super Bowl every three years
***1990
File:1990 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1990 FIFA World Cup is played in Italy; The Human Genome Project is launched; Voyager I takes the famous Pale Blue Dot image- speaking on the fragility of Humankind, humanity on Earth, Astroph ...
–1997
File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; ''Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of ...
: Most AFC playoff games, Super Bowl every three years
** 2006–2033: ''NBC Sunday Night Football
''NBC Sunday Night Football'' (abbreviated as ''SNF'') is an American weekly television broadcast of National Football League (NFL) games on NBC and Peacock (streaming service), Peacock in the United States. It began airing on August 6, 2006, wit ...
'', Kickoff game, (2006-2022 Super Bowl every three years, 2023-2033 Super Bowl every four years)
*** 2006–2013
File:2013 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: Edward Snowden becomes internationally famous for leaking classified NSA wiretapping information; Typhoon Haiyan kills over 6,000 in the Philippines and Southeast Asia; The Dhaka garment ...
: Two wild-card playoff games
***2012
File:2012 Events Collage V3.png, From left, clockwise: The passenger cruise ship Costa Concordia lies capsized after the Costa Concordia disaster; Damage to Casino Pier in Seaside Heights, New Jersey as a result of Hurricane Sandy; People gather ...
–2033: Thanksgiving primetime game
***2014
File:2014 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Stocking up supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE) for the Western African Ebola virus epidemic; Citizens examining the ruins after the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping; Bundles of wat ...
–2019
File:2019 collage v1.png, From top left, clockwise: Hong Kong protests turn to widespread riots and civil disobedience; House of Representatives votes to adopt articles of impeachment against Donald Trump; CRISPR gene editing first used to experim ...
: One wild-card playoff game, one divisional playoff game
*** 2016–2017
File:2017 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The War Against ISIS at the Battle of Mosul (2016-2017); aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing; The Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017 ("Great American Eclipse"); North Korea tests a ser ...
: Several Thursdays, rare Saturdays [simulcast on NFL Network
NFL Network (occasionally abbreviated on-air as NFLN) is an American sports-oriented pay television network owned by the National Football League (NFL) and is part of NFL Media, which also includes NFL.com, NFL Films, NFL Mobile, NFL Now and N ...
]
***2020 NFL season, 2020–2022: Two wild-card playoff games, one divisional playoff game
* CBS
**1956 NFL season, 1956– 1969 NFL season, 1969: (NFL – Sundays & several Mondays)
**1970
Events
January
* January 1 – Unix time epoch reached at 00:00:00 UTC.
* January 5 – The 7.1 Tonghai earthquake shakes Tonghai County, Yunnan province, China, with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (''Extreme''). Between 10,000 and 1 ...
–1993
File:1993 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The Oslo I Accord is signed in an attempt to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict; The Russian White House is shelled during the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis; Czechoslovakia is peace ...
: (NFC – Sundays, Thanksgiving, two Saturdays)
***1970
Events
January
* January 1 – Unix time epoch reached at 00:00:00 UTC.
* January 5 – The 7.1 Tonghai earthquake shakes Tonghai County, Yunnan province, China, with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (''Extreme''). Between 10,000 and 1 ...
–1983
The year 1983 saw both the official beginning of the Internet and the first mobile cellular telephone call.
Events January
* January 1 – The migration of the ARPANET to TCP/IP is officially completed (this is considered to be the beginning ...
: All NFC playoff games, Super Bowl every two years
***1984
Events
January
* January 1 – The Bornean Sultanate of Brunei gains full independence from the United Kingdom, having become a British protectorate in 1888.
* January 7 – Brunei becomes the sixth member of the Association of Southeast As ...
–1989
File:1989 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The Cypress structure collapses as a result of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, killing motorists below; The proposal document for the World Wide Web is submitted; The Exxon Valdez oil tanker ru ...
: All NFC playoff games, Super Bowl every three years
***1990
File:1990 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1990 FIFA World Cup is played in Italy; The Human Genome Project is launched; Voyager I takes the famous Pale Blue Dot image- speaking on the fragility of Humankind, humanity on Earth, Astroph ...
–1993
File:1993 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The Oslo I Accord is signed in an attempt to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict; The Russian White House is shelled during the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis; Czechoslovakia is peace ...
: Most NFC playoff games, Super Bowl every three years
**1998
1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''.
Events January
* January 6 – The ''Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently s ...
–2005
File:2005 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico; the Funeral of Pope John Paul II is held in Vatican City; "Me at the zoo", the first video ever to be uploaded to YouTube; Eris (dwarf planet), Er ...
: (AFC – Sundays, Thanksgiving, two Saturdays, most AFC playoff games, Super Bowl every three years)
** 2006–2013
File:2013 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: Edward Snowden becomes internationally famous for leaking classified NSA wiretapping information; Typhoon Haiyan kills over 6,000 in the Philippines and Southeast Asia; The Dhaka garment ...
: (AFC – Sundays, Thanksgiving, most AFC playoff games, Super Bowl every three years)
**2014
File:2014 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Stocking up supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE) for the Western African Ebola virus epidemic; Citizens examining the ruins after the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping; Bundles of wat ...
–2033: (NFL – Sundays, Thanksgiving, most AFC playoff games,) (2006-2022 Super Bowl every three years, 2023-2033 Super Bowl every four years)
**
***2014–2017
File:2017 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The War Against ISIS at the Battle of Mosul (2016-2017); aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing; The Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017 ("Great American Eclipse"); North Korea tests a ser ...
: Several Thursdays, rare Saturdays [either conference, simulcast on NFL Network
NFL Network (occasionally abbreviated on-air as NFLN) is an American sports-oriented pay television network owned by the National Football League (NFL) and is part of NFL Media, which also includes NFL.com, NFL Films, NFL Mobile, NFL Now and N ...
]
*Fox
Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush'').
Twelv ...
**1994
File:1994 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1994 Winter Olympics are held in Lillehammer, Norway; The Kaiser Permanente building after the 1994 Northridge earthquake; A model of the MS Estonia, which sank in the Baltic Sea; Nelson Ma ...
–2005
File:2005 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico; the Funeral of Pope John Paul II is held in Vatican City; "Me at the zoo", the first video ever to be uploaded to YouTube; Eris (dwarf planet), Er ...
: (NFC – Sundays, Thanksgiving, two Saturdays, most NFC playoff games, Super Bowl every three years)
** 2006–2013
File:2013 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: Edward Snowden becomes internationally famous for leaking classified NSA wiretapping information; Typhoon Haiyan kills over 6,000 in the Philippines and Southeast Asia; The Dhaka garment ...
: (NFC – Sundays, Thanksgiving, most NFC playoff games, Super Bowl every three years)
**2014
File:2014 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Stocking up supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE) for the Western African Ebola virus epidemic; Citizens examining the ruins after the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping; Bundles of wat ...
–2033: (NFL – Sundays, Thanksgiving, most NFC playoff games,) (2006-2022 Super Bowl every three years, 2023-2033 Super Bowl every four years)
***2018–2021: Several Thursdays, rare Saturdays [either conference, simulcast on NFL Network
NFL Network (occasionally abbreviated on-air as NFLN) is an American sports-oriented pay television network owned by the National Football League (NFL) and is part of NFL Media, which also includes NFL.com, NFL Films, NFL Mobile, NFL Now and N ...
2018-2022]
* ABC
**1948 NFL season, 1948, 1950 NFL season, 1950, 1953 NFL season, 1953–1955
Events January
* January 3 – José Ramón Guizado becomes president of Panama.
* January 17 – , the first nuclear-powered submarine, puts to sea for the first time, from Groton, Connecticut.
* January 18– 20 – Battle of Yiji ...
: (NFL)
** 1960 American Football League season, 1960–1964
Events January
* January 1 – The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland is dissolved.
* January 5 - In the first meeting between leaders of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches since the fifteenth century, Pope Paul VI and Patriarc ...
: ( AFL)
**1970
Events
January
* January 1 – Unix time epoch reached at 00:00:00 UTC.
* January 5 – The 7.1 Tonghai earthquake shakes Tonghai County, Yunnan province, China, with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (''Extreme''). Between 10,000 and 1 ...
–2005
File:2005 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico; the Funeral of Pope John Paul II is held in Vatican City; "Me at the zoo", the first video ever to be uploaded to YouTube; Eris (dwarf planet), Er ...
; 2022
File:2022 collage V1.png, Clockwise, from top left: Road junction at Yamato-Saidaiji Station several hours after the assassination of Shinzo Abe; Anti-government protest in Sri Lanka in front of the Presidential Secretariat; The global monkeyp ...
-2033: ''Monday Night Football''
***1984
Events
January
* January 1 – The Bornean Sultanate of Brunei gains full independence from the United Kingdom, having become a British protectorate in 1888.
* January 7 – Brunei becomes the sixth member of the Association of Southeast As ...
–1989
File:1989 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The Cypress structure collapses as a result of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, killing motorists below; The proposal document for the World Wide Web is submitted; The Exxon Valdez oil tanker ru ...
: Super Bowl every three years
***1990
File:1990 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1990 FIFA World Cup is played in Italy; The Human Genome Project is launched; Voyager I takes the famous Pale Blue Dot image- speaking on the fragility of Humankind, humanity on Earth, Astroph ...
–2005
File:2005 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico; the Funeral of Pope John Paul II is held in Vatican City; "Me at the zoo", the first video ever to be uploaded to YouTube; Eris (dwarf planet), Er ...
: Two wild-card playoff games, Super Bowl every three years
***2003
File:2003 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The crew of STS-107 perished when the Space Shuttle Columbia Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, disintegrated during reentry into Atmosphere of Earth, Earth's atmosphere; SARS became an 2002– ...
–2005: Kickoff game
**2015
File:2015 Events Collage new.png, From top left, clockwise: Civil service in remembrance of November 2015 Paris attacks; Germanwings Flight 9525 was purposely crashed into the French Alps; the rubble of residences in Kathmandu following the April ...
–2033: One wild-card playoff game
**2023-2033: One divisional playoff game
**2018-2033: Pro Bowl
The National Football League All-Star Game (1939–1942), Pro Bowl (1951–2022), or Pro Bowl Games (starting in 2023) is an annual event held by the National Football League (NFL) featuring the league's star players.
The format has changed thro ...
**2023-2033: Super Bowl every four years
*ESPN
ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The ...
**1987
File:1987 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The MS Herald of Free Enterprise capsizes after leaving the Port of Zeebrugge in Belgium, killing 193; Northwest Airlines Flight 255 crashes after takeoff from Detroit Metropolitan Airpor ...
–1997
File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; ''Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of ...
: ''ESPN Sunday Night NFL'' (second half of season)
**1998
1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''.
Events January
* January 6 – The ''Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently s ...
–2005
File:2005 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico; the Funeral of Pope John Paul II is held in Vatican City; "Me at the zoo", the first video ever to be uploaded to YouTube; Eris (dwarf planet), Er ...
: '' ESPN Sunday Night Football'' (entire season), one Thursday, one Saturday
***2002
File:2002 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 2002 Winter Olympics are held in Salt Lake City; Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and her daughter Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon die; East Timor gains independence from Indonesia and ...
only: Kickoff game
** 2006–2033: ''Monday Night Football
''ESPN Monday Night Football'' (abbreviated as ''MNF'' and also known as ''ESPN Monday Night Football on ABC'' for simulcasts) is an American live television broadcast of weekly National Football League (NFL) games currently airing on ESPN, A ...
'' (select games simulcast on ABC from 2020–present)
***2021
File:2021 collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: the James Webb Space Telescope was launched in 2021; Protesters in Yangon, Myanmar following the coup d'état; A civil demonstration against the October 2021 coup in Sudan; Crowd shortly after t ...
–2023: Manningcast supplemental telecast
**2014
File:2014 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Stocking up supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE) for the Western African Ebola virus epidemic; Citizens examining the ruins after the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping; Bundles of wat ...
: One wild-card playoff game
**2016-2017: Pro Bowl
The National Football League All-Star Game (1939–1942), Pro Bowl (1951–2022), or Pro Bowl Games (starting in 2023) is an annual event held by the National Football League (NFL) featuring the league's star players.
The format has changed thro ...
**2018–2033: Simulcasts and/or Megacast supplemental coverage of any game carried by ABC
*NFL Network
NFL Network (occasionally abbreviated on-air as NFLN) is an American sports-oriented pay television network owned by the National Football League (NFL) and is part of NFL Media, which also includes NFL.com, NFL Films, NFL Mobile, NFL Now and N ...
** 2006–2021: ''Thursday Night Football
''Thursday Night Football'' (often abbreviated as ''TNF'') is the branding used for broadcasts of National Football League (NFL) games that broadcast primarily on Thursday nights. Most of the games kick off at 8:15 Eastern Time (8:20 prior to 20 ...
'', at least one Saturday game (except 2011–2013)
** 2006–2011 Thanksgiving primetime game
** 2023–2033: '' NFL Network Special'' (Late-season games)
Current Spanish-language broadcasters:
*Universo
Universo is a Legion of Super-Heroes supervillain in the 30th and 31st centuries of the DC Comics universe. He was created by Jim Shooter and Curt Swan, and first appeared in ''Adventure Comics'' #349 (October 1966).
Pre-Zero Hour
Universo first ...
/ Telemundo Deportes
**2014
File:2014 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Stocking up supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE) for the Western African Ebola virus epidemic; Citizens examining the ruins after the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping; Bundles of wat ...
–2033: NBC simulcasts, including all playoff games
*Fox Deportes
Fox Deportes (formerly Fox Sports en Español and stylized in all caps as FOX Deportes) is an American pay television network dedicated to broadcasting sports-related programming in Spanish, aimed at the Hispanic population in the United State ...
**2014
File:2014 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Stocking up supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE) for the Western African Ebola virus epidemic; Citizens examining the ruins after the Chibok schoolgirls kidnapping; Bundles of wat ...
–2033: Fox Simulcasts, including all playoff games
**: Select Fox simulcasts, including all playoff games and Thursday games broadcast on Fox
*ESPN Deportes
ESPN Deportes (, ''ESPN Sports'') is an American multinational Spanish-language pay television sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., a joint venture between The Walt Disney Company (which owns a controlling 80% stake) and Hearst Communications (wh ...
(select simulcasts on ESPN2
ESPN2 is an American multinational pay television network owned by ESPN Inc., a joint venture between The Walt Disney Company (which owns a controlling 80% stake) and Hearst Communications (which owns the remaining 20%).
ESPN2 was initially ...
from 2017 onward)
** 2006–2021: ESPN/ABC simulcasts, including ESPN's wild card game, plus Super Bowls in CBS-covered years
Current mobility partners:
*Verizon Wireless
Verizon is an American wireless network operator that previously operated as a separate division of Verizon Communications under the name Verizon Wireless. In a 2019 reorganization, Verizon moved the wireless products and services into the divi ...
**2014–2017: Exclusive carrier to view NFL telecasts on mobile devices with the rights costing $250 million per year.
**2018–2022: Expanded agreement to include streaming in-market NFL telecasts on any mobile carrier through one of its websites such as Yahoo
Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo! Inc. (2017–present), Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds ma ...
with the rights costing Verizon $500 million per year.
*YouTube TV
YouTube TV is an American streaming television service operated by YouTube, a wholly owned subsidiary of Google. Announced on February 28, 2017, the virtual multichannel video programming distributor offers a selection of live linear channel ...
/YouTube
YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second most ...
Primetime Channels
**2023-2029: NFL Sunday Ticket
NFL Sunday Ticket is an out-of-market sports package that broadcasts National Football League (NFL) regular season games unavailable on local affiliates. It carries all regional Sunday afternoon games produced by Fox and CBS. The ideal customer ...
*Amazon Prime Video
Amazon Prime Video, also known simply as Prime Video, is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming and rental service of Amazon offered as a standalone service or as part of Amazon's Prime subscription. The service p ...
/Twitch
Twitch may refer to:
Biology
* Muscle contraction
** Convulsion, rapid and repeated muscle contraction and relaxation
** Fasciculation, a small, local, involuntary muscle contraction
** Myoclonic twitch, a jerk usually caused by sudden muscle co ...
**2017 only: 10 Thursday Night games, 1 Christmas game on Prime Video alone
**2018 and 2019: 11 Thursday Night games on Prime Video and Twitch
**2020-2021: 11 Thursday Night games, 1 Saturday Football game on Prime Video and Twitch
**2022–2033: All Thursday Night games (excluding NFL Kickoff and Thanksgiving Night Games)
Former broadcasters:
*DuMont Television Network
The DuMont Television Network (also known as the DuMont Network, DuMont Television, simply DuMont/Du Mont, or (incorrectly) Dumont ) was one of America's pioneer commercial television networks, rivaling NBC and CBS for the distinction of bein ...
**1951
Events
January
* January 4 – Korean War: Third Battle of Seoul – Chinese and North Korean forces capture Seoul for the second time (having lost the Second Battle of Seoul in September 1950).
* January 9 – The Government of the Uni ...
–1955
Events January
* January 3 – José Ramón Guizado becomes president of Panama.
* January 17 – , the first nuclear-powered submarine, puts to sea for the first time, from Groton, Connecticut.
* January 18– 20 – Battle of Yiji ...
: ''Saturday Night Football''
* TNT
**1990
File:1990 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1990 FIFA World Cup is played in Italy; The Human Genome Project is launched; Voyager I takes the famous Pale Blue Dot image- speaking on the fragility of Humankind, humanity on Earth, Astroph ...
–1997
File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; ''Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of ...
: several Sunday night games (first half of season)
One-time and special broadcasts:
*NFL RedZone
''NFL RedZone'' (stylized as ''NFL RedZone from NFL Network'') is an American sports television channel owned and operated by NFL Network since 2009. As a "special" game-day exclusive, it broadcasts on Sundays during the NFL regular season from ...
**2009
File:2009 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The vertical stabilizer of Air France Flight 447 is pulled out from the Atlantic Ocean; Barack Obama becomes the first African American to become President of the United States; 2009 Iran ...
-present: Premium service of live whip around coverage of Sunday afternoon games.
*Nickelodeon
Nickelodeon (often shortened to Nick) is an American pay television television channel, channel which launched on April 1, 1979, as the first cable channel for children. It is run by Paramount Global through its List of assets owned by Param ...
**2021
File:2021 collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: the James Webb Space Telescope was launched in 2021; Protesters in Yangon, Myanmar following the coup d'état; A civil demonstration against the October 2021 coup in Sudan; Crowd shortly after t ...
-2033: Select multicast of games on CBS, featuring kid-friendly modifications to the in-game presentation
Leverage over the networks
League criticism
The NFL's status as a prime offering by the networks has led some to conclude that unbiased coverage of the league is not possible, although this may be true of most sports. However, with the current concentration of media ownership
Concentration of media ownership (also known as media consolidation or media convergence) is a process whereby progressively fewer individuals or organizations control increasing shares of the mass media. Contemporary research demonstrates in ...
in the U.S., the league essentially has broadcast contracts with four media companies (Paramount Global
Paramount Global (Trade name, doing business as Paramount) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational mass media and entertainment Conglomerate (company), conglomerate owned and operated by National Amusements (79.4%) and headquar ...
, NBCUniversal
NBCUniversal Media, LLC is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate corporation owned by Comcast and headquartered at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, United States.
NBCUniversal is primaril ...
, Fox Corporation
Fox Corporation (stylized in all-caps as FOX Corporation) is a publicly traded American mass media company operated and controlled by media mogul Rupert Murdoch and headquartered at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in New York City. Incorporated ...
, and ESPN's parent company The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment industry, entertainment conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios (Burbank), Walt Disney Stud ...
) that own a combined vast majority of the American broadcast and cable networks.
ESPN attempted to run a dramatic series showing steamier aspects of pro football, ''Playmakers
''Playmakers'' is an American drama series that aired on ESPN from August 26 to November 11, 2003. It depicted the lives of the Cougars, a fictional professional football team in an unidentified city. The show starred Omar Gooding, Marcello T ...
'', but canceled the series after the league reportedly threatened to exclude the network from the next set of TV contracts. The network also withdrew its partnership with the PBS
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcaster and non-commercial, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly funded nonprofit organization and the most prominent provider of ed ...
series '' Frontline'' on the 2013 documentary '' League of Denial'', which chronicles the history of head injuries in the NFL, shortly after a meeting between ESPN executives and league commissioner Roger Goodell took place in New York City, though ESPN denies pressure from the NFL led to its backing out of the project, claiming a lack of editorial control instead.
Then in July 2015, ''The Hollywood Reporter
''The Hollywood Reporter'' (''THR'') is an American digital and print magazine which focuses on the Hollywood film, television, and entertainment industries. It was founded in 1930 as a daily trade paper, and in 2010 switched to a weekly large ...
'' reported that sources within ESPN believed that the NFL gave them a "terrible" 2015 ''Monday Night Football
''ESPN Monday Night Football'' (abbreviated as ''MNF'' and also known as ''ESPN Monday Night Football on ABC'' for simulcasts) is an American live television broadcast of weekly National Football League (NFL) games currently airing on ESPN, A ...
'' schedule as "payback" for remarks made on air by both ESPN commentators Keith Olbermann
Keith Theodore Olbermann (; born January 27, 1959) is an American sports and political commentator and writer.
Olbermann spent the first 20 years of his career in sports journalism. He was a sports correspondent for CNN and for local TV and ...
and Bill Simmons
William John Simmons III (born September 25, 1969) is an American sports analyst, author, podcaster, and former sports writer who is the founder and CEO of the sports and pop culture website '' The Ringer''. Simmons first gained attention wi ...
that were critical of the league and Goodell; ESPN parted ways with both Olbermann and Simmons during that same year.
In a 2019 interview with ESPN, longtime NBC Sports
NBC Sports is an American programming division of the broadcast network NBC, owned and operated by NBC Sports Group division of NBCUniversal and subsidiary of Comcast. The division is responsible for sports broadcasts on the network, and it ...
anchor Bob Costas revealed that he had been relieved of duties as host of Super Bowl LII the previous year after he made comments at a University of Maryland symposium that the sport of football "destroys people's brains." A few years earlier, Costas had been told by NBC brass he could not present an essay on ''Football Night in America'' about the 2015 film ''Concussion (2015 film), Concussion'' because the network was in the process of bidding for the rights to ''Thursday Night Football''.
Counterprogramming
Counterprogramming (television), Counterprogramming, where other networks attempt to offer a program which is intended to compete with the NFL audience for a regular season game, playoff game or the Super Bowl (as Fox did in 1992 with a special segment of the sketch comedy series ''In Living Color'' during Super Bowl XXVI), has also been heavily discouraged with the consolidation of rights among the major networks; ESPN generally airs low-profile niche sports, non-conference men's and women's college basketball (often featuring teams in non-NFL markets or non-football schools, as high-profile non-conference games usually occur in November and December during the Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks), and minor league sports on Sunday afternoons, along with basic audio-only 'carousel' reports of current NFL scores by reporters from NFL stadiums on their other networks resembling those on ESPN Radio or Fox Sports Radio. Since 2013, ESPN has done some limited counterprogramming using Canadian Football League coverage from sister network and licensing partner CFL on TSN, TSN; in most cases, ESPN carries games in times when the NFL is not airing (except in cases, such as the Grey Cup, when a conflict is unavoidable). ESPN has also counterprogrammed the NFL's Thursday Night Football games with ESPN College Football Thursday Primetime, college football games of its own; the network had been carrying college football on Thursdays years before the NFL decided to play regularly on that night.
Programming on Fox and CBS when game coverage does not occur generally consists of brokered programming which feature extreme sports tours, Professional Bull Riders event coverage, and non-championship golf and Professional Bowlers Association broadcasts, along with related documentaries. Fox has utilised the position for a "football-futbol doubleheader" with a 2:00 p.m. or 5:00 p.m. Major League Soccer match, depending on market (the early game goes to markets with a late NFL game, and the late game goes to markets with an early NFL game; MLS, Fox, and the markets in question will work to ensure the late-season push for the playoff games will not clash with the NFL game in the same market; teams with shared ownership in close markets will not be allowed to have games on at the same time, such as the New England Patriots
The New England Patriots are a professional American football team based in the Greater Boston area. They compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) AFC East, East divisio ...
and New England Revolution with Robert Kraft, Atlanta Falcons and Atlanta United FC with Arthur Blank, Cleveland Browns and the Columbus Crew with Jimmy Haslam, and the Kansas City Chiefs
The Kansas City Chiefs are a professional American football team based in Kansas City, Missouri. The Chiefs compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) West division.
The t ...
and FC Dallas with Clark Hunt). Fox uses the time also for the PBA Clash bowling event starting in 2018, and in 2021 will feature the NHRA Camping World Drag Racing Series in a similar manner (early game markets will air the race on tape delay, late game markets will air the race live). In many cases, primary market stations will usually air a local postgame show from their station's sports department with analysis and interviews and push the brokered programming to late night or a secondary station, if they carry it at all (there are network mandates to carry the PBR and PBA, for example). NBC, which has the Sunday night package, will run Golf Channel on NBC coverage, including the Evian Championship (a women's major held in France), an early season PGA Tour event (since the 2019–20 season; prior to the calendar change, late-season PGA Tour events were held in September), or an international team tournament (depending on year, Ryder, Solheim, or President's Cup), motorsport (NTT IndyCar Series and NASCAR Cup Series late-season events; all serve as lead-in programming to Football Night in America), and Olympic sports which the demographic is focused towards women, such as ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating. Likewise, since 2010 ABC has run low-profile same-week repeats of their programming in solidarity with ESPN; in 2011, it did air 2011 IZOD IndyCar World Championship, the INDYCAR season finale in Las Vegas, which was abandoned after reigning 2011 Indianapolis 500, Indianapolis 500 champion Dan Wheldon, who resided in the Tampa Bay Buccaneers
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are a professional American football team based in Tampa, Florida. The Buccaneers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) NFC South, South divisio ...
market, was killed on Lap 11 of 200.
Generally, the only networks to counterprogram the Super Bowl currently are niche cable networks with no "sports fan" appeal such as Animal Planet with their ''Puppy Bowl'' and imitation programming, and various marathons by other cable networks. In years when it does not carry the game, Fox has often purposely burned off failed sitcoms and dramas to discourage viewers from tuning away from the game, with other networks generally running marathons of popular reality or drama programs (for NBC, ''The Apprentice (U.S. TV series), The Apprentice'' has filled this role) merely to fill the evening rather than an actual attempt to counterprogram, and CBS notably runs themed ''60 Minutes'' episodes consisting of past stories featuring figures that fit the episode's theme. In 2022, Super Bowl LVI is scheduled to overlap with the 2022 Winter Olympics, Winter Olympic Games. As NBC is the Olympics rightsholder for the United States, it sought to avoid a conflict between both events by trading Super Bowl LV to CBS in order to air the 2022 game, allowing NBC to maximize revenue in the process as it had in 2018 when it aired Super Bowl LII days prior to the start of the Pyeongchang Olympics. Under a new contract with the NFL, NBC gained rights to Super Bowls in 2026, 2030, and 2034, which are also Winter Olympic years (NBC's current contract expires after the 2032 Summer Olympics in Brisbane, in Australia).
Until 2014 when the highlights program ''Gameday Live'' was launched, the NFL Network
NFL Network (occasionally abbreviated on-air as NFLN) is an American sports-oriented pay television network owned by the National Football League (NFL) and is part of NFL Media, which also includes NFL.com, NFL Films, NFL Mobile, NFL Now and N ...
during 1:00 p.m. regular season games and the playoffs merely featured a still screen with the data of ongoing games on-screen under the title ''NFL GameCenter'', while Sirius XM NFL Radio played in the background with 'carousel' score reports, with only highlights of game action from radio play-by-play heard occasionally. ''Super Bowl GameCenter'' retains this format during the Super Bowl, but with the NFL on Westwood One, Westwood One radio broadcast of the game instead.
Broadcast delimiters
At the start of the game, a Cold open, teaser animation is displayed on all broadcasts. "''Name of broadcaster'' welcomes you to the following presentation of the National Football League" (or similar phrasing) is announced, while at the end of the game, the message is "''Name of broadcaster'' thanks you for watching this presentation of the National Football League" (or similar phrasing). This announcement is designed to separate game coverage from news, sports analysis, or entertainment programming not under the NFL contract and ownership.
Since 1998, the NFL has owned the rights to game broadcasts once they air—a copyright disclaimer airs either before the start of the second half or after the first commercial break of the second half, depending on the broadcaster (''"This broadcast is copyrighted by NFL Productions for the private use of our audience. Any other use of this broadcast, or any pictures, descriptions or accounts of the game without the consent of NFL Productions is prohibited.''", or similar phrasing). The phrasing of this disclaimer has gone through several revisions, the latest iteration first being used for the 2019 season. Notably, the disclaimer now refers to the ''broadcast'', not ''telecast'', and assigns copyright to NFL Productions, as opposed to the NFL. As wholly owned by the league, NFL Network has the exclusive rights to re-air games and a select few are chosen each week.
Restrictions on sponsorship
The NFL has a strict policy prohibiting networks from running ads during official NFL programming (pre- and post-game studio shows and the games themselves) from the gambling industry, and has rejected some ads from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. Commissioner Roger Goodell explained in 2007 that it was inappropriate for the sport to be associated with sports betting. These restrictions also apply to any hotels that contain casinos, even if the casino is not mentioned in the ad. Officially, wagers such as over/unders and point spreads cannot be acknowledged on-air. Despite this policy, Al Michaels has been known for subtly including gambling-related observations in his commentary, as did Jimmy the Greek, Jimmy Snyder during his time as an NFL analyst in the 1980s. Most teams insert similar clauses into their radio contracts, which are locally negotiated. The NFL injury report and required videotaping of practice are intended to prevent gamblers from gaining inside information. In contrast, Fantasy football (American), fantasy football is often free to play. Daily fantasy sports, which are structured to prevent being classified as gambling, air advertisements on the NFL's partner networks on game days, but not during time controlled by the league.
On January 3, 2019, the NFL announced Caesars Entertainment Corporation as the "first ever official casino sponsor of the NFL," though was clear that the deal does not encompass sports betting.
The NFL also bans advertisements in several other product segments, including “dietary or nutritional supplements that contain ingredients other than vitamins and minerals, [..] or any prohibited substance”, energy drinks, birth control, condoms, and hard liquor. In the 2017 season, the NFL will, with restrictions, allow a limited amount of liquor advertising during broadcasts.
The NFL imposes restrictions on sponsored segments during game coverage; this does not apply to national or local radio broadcasts. These are permitted only prior to kick off, during halftime, and following the game; however, these segments (and other programming with title sponsorships, particularly halftime and post-game shows or other sports properties) can be advertised a couple of times during game coverage, and "aerial footage" providers (i.e. sponsored non-rigid airship, blimps) may be acknowledged, usually once an hour as is standard in other sports. Other acknowledgments (including HDTV or Skycam-type camera sponsorships) are limited to pre-kickoff and post-game credits. This is done so that, while competitors of the NFL's official sponsors may advertise on game broadcasts, they will not potentially become synonymous with the league through in-game and/or title sponsorship.
Restrictions on reporters
Sideline reporters are restricted as to whom they can speak to and when (usually a head coach at halftime, and one or two players before and after the game ends). Information on injured players or rules interpretations are relayed from NFL off-field officials to the TV producers in the truck, who then pass it along to the sideline reporters or booth announcers. Thus, CBS opted in 2006 to no longer use sideline reporters except for some playoff games. ESPN followed suit by reducing the roles of their sideline reporters in 2008. Fox hired former NFL officiating director Mike Pereira in 2010 as a rules analyst, who relays rules interpretations from Los Angeles to the games that network covers, leaving their sideline reporters able to focus less on that role. Likewise, CBS hired retired referee Mike Carey (American football), Mike Carey in 2014 in the same role from New York on Sundays and the NFL Network in Culver City, California, Culver City during ''Thursday Night Football
''Thursday Night Football'' (often abbreviated as ''TNF'') is the branding used for broadcasts of National Football League (NFL) games that broadcast primarily on Thursday nights. Most of the games kick off at 8:15 Eastern Time (8:20 prior to 20 ...
'' games, though he departed the network after the 2015 season and was replaced by Gene Steratore in 2018. During the 2020 season, NFL sideline reporters instead were stationed in the lower portion of seating areas due to COVID-19 protocols, with news relayed to them by team officials or off-air staffers instead.
NFL Films
The NFL owns NFL Films, whose duties include providing game film to media outlets for highlights shows after a 2- to 3-day window during which outlets can use original game broadcast highlights.
International broadcasters
NFL+
The NFL operates NFL+, a streaming service that broadcasts live out-of-market preseason games, radio broadcasts from all 32 teams and Westwood One Sports, and live in-market games on mobile devices, in addition to library programming from NFL Films and NFL Network. A premium tier allows access to on-demand game replays. It was previously known as NFL Game Pass until adopting its current name prior to the 2022 NFL season.
See also
* NFL Network
NFL Network (occasionally abbreviated on-air as NFLN) is an American sports-oriented pay television network owned by the National Football League (NFL) and is part of NFL Media, which also includes NFL.com, NFL Films, NFL Mobile, NFL Now and N ...
* NFL Sunday Ticket
NFL Sunday Ticket is an out-of-market sports package that broadcasts National Football League (NFL) regular season games unavailable on local affiliates. It carries all regional Sunday afternoon games produced by Fox and CBS. The ideal customer ...
* List of current National Football League broadcasters
* Major League Baseball on television
* Major League Soccer on television
* National Basketball Association on television
* National Hockey League on television
Notes
References
Sources
FOXBusiness.com – NFL Blackout Policy Angers Fans
NFL Media Rights Deals For '07 Season
*''NFL Record and Fact Book'' ()
*''Total Football: The Official Encyclopedia of the National Football League'' ()
*''America's Game: How Pro Football Captured A Nation'' by Michael MacCambridge ()
NFL to remain on broadcast TV
NFL announces new prime-time TV packages
CleverDonkey.com: The NFL Should Bench Its Blackout Rules
NFL Network to televise regular-season games
by Michael Hiestand, USA Today
''USA Today'' (stylized in all uppercase) is an American daily middle-market newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth on September 15, 1982, the newspaper operates from Gannett's corporate headquarters in Tysons, Virg ...
, April 5, 2006 (Last accessed April 5, 2006)
A Chronology of Pro Football on Television
*[http://www.packersgame.net/green-bay-packers-live-tv-telecast-rights-usa/ Packers Live TV Telecast Rights in USA]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nfl On Television
National Football League on television,
ABC Sports
CBS Sports
Fox Sports original programming
NFL on NBC
Turner Sports
ESPN
NFL Network
Nickelodeon original programming
Monday Night Football
Sunday Night Football
Thursday Night Football