nfl network has the rights to thursday night football.
nfl network has the rights to thursday night football.
who has the rights to thursday night football?
nfl network
on february 5, 2014, the league announced it had sold off eight weeks of the nfl network's "thursday night football" package to cbs, who outbid competitors abc, fox, nbc, and turner sports. nfl network will simulcast cbs' thursday night games from weeks 2 through 8, will continue to carry the thursday night games from week 9 onward, and will also carry two saturday night games (week 16 doubleheader) for the first time since 2011, with one of those games being simulcast on cbs. all of these games (except for the one nfl network-only saturday night game) will be announced by cbs' lead commentating team of jim nantz (play-by-play) and phil simms (color analyst). the deal with cbs was initially only for the 2014 season, with the league having the option to extend it for an additional season. cbs is paying an additional $275 million for the package. local cbs affiliates automatically get the local simulcast rights to any game carried only on nfl network. the league exercised the option to extend its agreement with cbs through the 2015 season. for 2016 and 2017, the league split a ten-game package of thursday night games between nbc and cbs, with each paying an estimated $225 million per season for five games; cbs's games will be in the early part of the season as before, while nbc's will cover later in the season. under the terms of nfl network's retransmission agreements with cable providers, the nfl has included a stipulation requiring seven games in the "thursday night football" package to be carried solely on nfl network; for the 2018 season, potential bidders were free to place a bid on a package ranging from anywhere between four and eleven games. fox, the winning bidder, bought all eleven games that were up for bids. as the eighteen total games involve more time slots than can be accommodated with the fourteen thursday night time slots (excluding the kickoff, thanksgiving, and the last week of the season when no thursday game is played), four of the games are played on days other than thursdays (usually this involves at least one game in london in a sunday morning time slot and the remainder on saturdays, all nfl network exclusives), or if christmas lands on a monday, either a christmas eve or christmas day game.
history of the national football league on television
in addition to the regional games, the league also has packages of telecasts, mostly in prime time, that are carried nationwide. nbc broadcasts the primetime "sunday night football" package', which includes the thursday nfl kickoff game that starts the regular season and a primetime thanksgiving day game. espn carries all monday night football games. the nfl's own network, nfl network, broadcasts a series titled "thursday night football", which was originally exclusive to the network, but which in recent years has had several games simulcast on cbs (since 2014) and nbc (since 2016) (except the thanksgiving and kickoff games, which remain exclusive to nbc). for the 2017 season, the nfl network will broadcast 18 regular season games under its "thursday night football" brand, 16 thursday-evening contests (10 of which are simulcast on either nbc or cbs) as well as one of the nfl international series games on a sunday morning and one of the 2017 christmas afternoon games. in addition, 10 of the thursday night games will be streamed live on amazon prime. in 2017, the nfl games occupied the top three rates for a 30-second advertisement: $699,602 for sunday night football, $550,709 for thursday night football (nbc), and $549,791 for thursday night football (cbs).
national football league