Flex scheduling could be coming to Amazon’s “Thursday Night Football.”
Owners will be asked at next week’s league meetings to approve a flex scheduling plan for late-season Thursday games, sources said. The vote also would relax limits on the number of games each team can play on short rest each season.
Both measures would give schedule-makers more flexibility to avoid meaningless games with sub-.500 teams for Prime’s “TNF” window. Historically, the NFL’s Thursday night package has struggled with these types of low-interest games.
Specifically, the measure awaiting owners would permit the league to:
- Shift Sunday afternoon games to Thursday nights in weeks 14-17, with 15 days’ notice.
- Schedule teams for Thursday games after a previous Sunday game twice in the same season, up from the current limit of once.
NFL resolutions rarely are sent to the full ownership for a vote without a high degree of confidence they will pass, and the two media committees have been supportive, sources said. It’s not clear when the changes would become effective.
However, one insider speculated there could be some drama around this measure because coaches are present for the annual March league meeting, and they could lobby against this change in person, unlike at most other owners’ gatherings. Additionally, the NFLPA has been open about health and safety concerns around “TNF,” complaints that the addition of flex scheduling is certain to exacerbate.
Flex scheduling to Thursdays -- and exposing the best, most popular teams to more short weeks -- would optimize the value of broadcasts but could potentially upset coaches, players and ticket-holding fans.
There’s also a question about the number of games that could be flexed. The NFL will continue to use flex scheduling for NBC’s “Sunday Night Football.” ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” will add flex scheduling starting in Week 12 this coming season. And the Sunday afternoon broadcasters, CBS and Fox, will be able to protect more games from being flexed as part of their new broadcast deals. CBS and Fox each can protect one game per week, up from last season.
In Amazon Prime’s first season as the exclusive home of “Thursday Night Football,” 9.6 million viewers watched on average, Neilsen said. That was a good number for Prime, but it still marked a 46% decline from the prior year, when Thursday night games were carried on Fox and NFL Network. At times, the perceived low quality of the games became a significant media narrative, with even Prime’s own play-by-play announcer, Al Michaels, bemoaning the lack of action.
Commissioner Roger Goodell suggested flex scheduling could come to Thursdays during his Super Bowl week press conference in February. “Not today, but it’ll certainly be something that’s on our horizon,” Goodell said at the time.
Flex scheduling started in 2006 by allowing Sunday afternoon games to move to Sunday nights. This season, Sunday games will now be allowed to be shifted to Monday nights for the first time. The meetings run Sunday-Tuesday at a Phoenix area hotel.
