Early history The NFL Network's coverage was not the first time that NFL games were covered on Thursday or Saturday.
ABC televised occasional Thursday night games from 1978 to 1986 as part of its
Monday Night Football package. Prior to the new contract,
ESPN carried a handful of sporadic Thursday night games (usually those displaced from
Sunday night) and the broadcast networks used to air several national games on Saturday afternoons in mid-to-late December after the
college football regular season ended. Incidentally, the only reason the league is even allowed to televise football games on Saturday night stems from a legal loophole: the league's antitrust exemption, the
Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, was written when the NFL regular season ended in mid-December, and as such, it contains specific language that prohibits televising NFL games in most markets on Friday nights and all day on Saturdays between the second week of September and the second week of December, to protect
high school and college football. Since most high school and college seasons have ended by mid-December, other than
bowl games, there has been little desire to close this loophole, even though the regular season has expanded well beyond mid-December since the law's passage. In
2005, when the NFL negotiated a new set of television contracts,
Comcast-owned
OLN offered to pay $450 million for an eight-year contract to carry NFL prime time games. In exchange, Comcast planned to add NFL Network to its
digital cable lineup. The channel was added, but NFL Network decided to air the games itself, foregoing a rights fee. The other television deals generated $3.735 billion per year over an eight-year period for
CBS,
Fox,
NBC, ESPN and
DirecTV (owner of the
out-of-market sports package NFL Sunday Ticket). As previously mentioned,
Thursday Night Football debuted on November 23,
2006, with the
Kansas City Chiefs handing the visiting
Denver Broncos a 19–10
Thanksgiving defeat. Each of the game broadcasts were titled either
Thursday Night Football or
Saturday Night Football, depending on the night on which it aired. This format carried over to the
2007 season. At its launch, the package proved highly controversial mainly due to the relative unavailability of NFL Network at the time; the league used the games as leverage to encourage television providers to carry NFL Network on their basic service tiers, rather than in premium, sports-oriented packages that required subscribers to pay a higher fee; although, as with all other national cable telecasts of NFL games, the league's own regulations require the games to be syndicated to over-the-air
television stations in the local markets of the teams. These issues were magnified in 2007, when
a game between the New England Patriots and New York Giants that saw the
Patriots defeat the
Giants to close out a perfect regular season was simulcast nationally on both
CBS and
NBC, in addition to NFL Network and the local stations that the game was sold to, following concerns from politicians and other critics. Starting in
2008, NFL Network eliminated all but one of the Saturday night games and started their Thursday night package three weeks earlier. This was done to accommodate the earlier schedule and the league's antitrust exemption that prohibits Saturday games from being held for most of the season. In the
following season, all references to
Saturday Night Football were dropped, and any games that are not played on Thursday (such as in
2016, two Christmas weekend games and an
NFL International Series game) have since been branded as "special editions" of
Thursday Night Football, and later
Thursday Night Special or
NFL Network Special. As part of new media contracts taking effect in the 2012 season, the Thanksgiving primetime game was moved from NFL Network to NBC's
Sunday Night Football package. During
Super Bowl week in 2012, it was announced that the
Thursday Night Football package would expand from eight to 13 games and air on NFL Network, again soliciting and rejecting offers from
Turner Sports and Comcast. For the four seasons from 2012 to 2016, and again in 2020 and 2021 all 32 teams played a Thursday game following a Sunday game that guarantees each team a nationally televised game with 26 of them playing on
Thursday Night Football and the other six playing on Thanksgiving. In addition, matchups are created with the intent to minimize travel in the leadup to the Thursday game. In general, the road team will play a home game the Sunday prior, while the home team will either play at home or a road game against a nearby opponent the Sunday before hosting the Thursday game. However, there will be instances where the road team comes in having played a road game the Sunday prior in a nearby city that makes it possible for teams from far away to play each other on Thursday, as well as consolidate long road trips for the road team. For the 2012 season, a Spanish-language broadcast was added as
second audio program.
2014–2015: partnership with CBS Sports In January 2014, it was reported that the NFL was planning to sub-license a package of up to eight
Thursday Night Football games to another broadcaster for the
2014 season. The NFL had negotiated with its existing broadcast partners, along with Turner Sports. These eight games were to be simulcast by NFL Network, and reports indicated that ESPN planned to place the games on
ABC in the event it won the rights, bringing the NFL back to ABC for the first time since
Super Bowl XL and the move of
Monday Night Football to ESPN in 2006. The remaining games would remain exclusive to NFL Network, in order to satisfy carriage agreements with television providers guaranteeing a minimum number of games to air exclusively on the channel. On February 5, 2014, the NFL announced that
CBS had acquired the partial rights to
TNF for the 2014 season. Under the agreement, all of the
Thursday Night Football telecasts would be produced by
CBS Sports and called by CBS's primary announcing team of
Jim Nantz and
Phil Simms. The first eight games of the season were simulcast nationally on NFL Network and CBS; the remaining games in the package only aired nationally on NFL Network, but per league broadcast policies, were simulcast on local stations in the participating teams' markets. CBS affiliates were given
right of first refusal to air the local simulcast before it is offered to another station (as had occurred in
Cincinnati,
Ohio where the market's NBC affiliate
WLWT aired a game between the
Cincinnati Bengals and the
Cleveland Browns instead of CBS affiliate
WKRC-TV). A Saturday doubleheader was also added on Week 16: NFL Network aired the early game, while CBS aired the second, prime time game. The NFL considered CBS's bid to be the most attractive, owing to CBS's overall ratings stature (CBS had been the highest-rated broadcast network in the United States since the 2005-06 television season), a commitment to aggressively promote the Thursday games across its properties, and its plans to utilize CBS Sports' top NFL talent and production staff across all of the games in the package to ensure a major improvement in quality over the previous, in-house productions. With the move of selected games to CBS, media executives expected more major match-ups to appear on
Thursday Night Football than in previous years in order to attract better viewership; in the past,
Thursday Night Football had been criticized for often featuring games between lesser and poorer-performing teams. CBS and the NFL unveiled the games scheduled for
Thursday Night Football in April 2014; CBS's slate of games featured a number of major divisional rivalries, including
New York Giants–Washington,
Green Bay–Minnesota, and its
opening game on September 11, 2014, featuring the
Pittsburgh Steelers and the
Baltimore Ravens. In the wake of the controversy surrounding Ravens player
Ray Rice (who had been removed from the team and suspended from the NFL earlier in the week following the discovery of footage showing the player physically assaulting his wife, Janay, who was engaged to Rice at the time the security camera footage was recorded), changes were made to pre-game coverage on the first game in order to accommodate additional interviews and discussion related to the incident. Among these changes were the removal of an introductory segment featuring
Rihanna (who was similarly assaulted by fellow performer
Chris Brown in 2009) performing her song "
Run This Town". Following complaints by Rihanna on
Twitter regarding the removal, the song was pulled entirely from future broadcasts. The rights were negotiated under a one-year contract valued at $275 million; on January 18, 2015, the NFL announced that it would renew the arrangement with CBS for the 2015 season, with its value increasing to around $300 million. The
New York Post reported that this deal would also include the sale of a stake in NFL Network itself. On December 16, 2015, it was reported that the NFL was shopping the
TNF package as a one-year deal with an option for a second year, similarly to the current arrangement with CBS; the league also requested that bidders outline goals for "growing" NFL Network. The league was also reportedly interested in selling non-exclusive digital rights to simulcast the games to another partner, such as
Amazon.com,
Apple Inc.,
Google, or
Yahoo! (which exclusively streamed an International Series as part of a trial during the 2015 season, but would shut down its
original video content service in January 2016). In January 2016, it was reported that the NFL was considering splitting the
TNF package across multiple broadcasters in tandem with the possibility of expanding the overall package to 17 games. It was also reported that ESPN and Turner Sports were not interested in the package due to its short-term nature, and that Fox was attempting to outbid CBS. On February 1, 2016, the NFL announced that
TNF would be shared between CBS, NBC, and NFL Network for the 2016 and 2017 seasons. CBS and NBC would each air five games (resulting in a schedule of ten games on broadcast television in comparison to eight under the previous deal), followed by an additional eight games exclusively on NFL Network to satisfy NFL Network's
retransmission consent contracts with cable providers; the eight NFL Network-exclusive games included six Thursday contests, a Sunday morning International Series contest, and a
Christmas Day game. As with the previous contract, all games will be simulcast by NFL Network. Commissioner Roger Goodell stated that the league was "thrilled to add NBC to the
TNF mix, a trusted partner with a proven track record of success broadcasting NFL football in primetime, and look forward to expanding with a digital partner for what will be a unique tri-cast on broadcast, cable and digital platforms." On April 5, 2016, it was revealed that Twitter had acquired non-exclusive worldwide digital streaming rights to the ten broadcast television TNF games. The collaboration will also include streaming content on Twitter's
Periscope service, such as behind the scenes access. This also gave NBC a rare distinction of holding two primetime NFL packages, with them already holding
Sunday Night games.
Rogers Media, who owns television rights to the
TNF package in Canada through the end of the 2016 season but has not yet acquired digital rights (the majority of the NFL's media rights in Canada are owned by Rogers's rival,
Bell Media), successfully forced Twitter to
block the game streams in that country, overriding the league's insistence that the free stream be global. Due to the streaming deal,
over-the-top television providers
PlayStation Vue and
Sling TV are also required to black out the simulcast of the games on NFL Network. The first game produced by NBC Sports was broadcast exclusively on NFL Network on November 3, 2016, while the first game simulcast nationally on NBC aired on November 17.
A cappella group
Pentatonix recorded a reworked version of their song "Sing" ("Weekend Go") to serve as the opening theme song for NBC's
TNF telecasts; NBC also commissioned new instrumental theme music by Jimmy Greco, "Can't Hold Us Down", which was performed by members of the orchestra from the Broadway musical
Hamilton. Both were retained for NBC's games in 2017. On April 4, 2017, it was announced that Amazon.com had acquired non-exclusive streaming rights to the ten broadcast television games for the 2017 season over their
Amazon Prime Video service, under a deal valued at $50 million, a five-fold increase over the $10 million paid by Twitter. The streams were exclusive to paid
Prime subscribers. The deal includes $30 million worth of promotion. Amazon planned several special features for its inaugural game, including broadcasting alternate feeds with
Spanish,
Portuguese, and a secondary English broadcast featuring soccer commentators
Ross Dyer and
Tommy Smyth (intended for international viewers unfamiliar with the rules and terminology of American football), and a pre-show hosted by
Tiki Barber and
Curtis Stone that featured presentations of NFL merchandise available for purchase on Amazon. The November 16, 2017 telecast between the
Pittsburgh Steelers and
Tennessee Titans was the first NFL broadcast to intentionally use the
Skycam as its primary camera angle, as opposed to the usual sideline camera that has been used since telecasts of NFL games began in 1939.
NBC Sports had previously switched to a skycam-only presentation for portions of two Sunday night games earlier that season because of fog and smoke (and, sixteen years prior, during its coverage of the
XFL); positive reaction to the impromptu change prompted NBC to experiment with using the strategy for the full game. The Skycam Angle was also used for the December 14 telecast between the
Denver Broncos and the
Indianapolis Colts.
2018–2021: Fox and Amazon Prime Video In early January 2018,
Bloomberg reported that ABC/ESPN and
Fox Sports had both made bids for the next
TNF package. Both Fox and
Fox Sports 1 were named as potential outlets for the package in the Fox Sports bid, which was intended to showcase
Fox's continued commitment to sports after the
sale of its entertainment businesses to ESPN's majority-owner
The Walt Disney Company (which excluded the Fox network itself and Fox Sports' national operations, such as FS1, among other assets). CBS and NBC were also considering renewing their existing contracts, but had requested a lower rights fee to compensate for the decreasing viewership of the NFL (
TNF had been cited as one factor in the downturn, due to a perceived oversaturation of nationally televised games). It was also reported that the NFL would also allow digital companies to make bids for exclusive rights to the
TNF package which forego a television partner entirely, unlike the previous non-exclusive deals with Twitter and Amazon. On January 30, 2018, it was reported by multiple sources that Fox had won the package. The next day, the NFL officially announced that Fox had acquired the broadcast television rights to the
TNF package under a five-year deal lasting from 2018 through 2022 (which is aligned with the conclusion of the NFL's other television deals). Fox would air eleven games per season in simulcast with NFL Network, and Fox Sports would produce all games within the package. ESPN reported that Fox would be paying around $60 million per game—an increase over the estimated $45 million per game paid by CBS and NBC under the previous contract, totaling an estimated $660 million per season. The Fox deal was terminated a season early in 2021. Amazon renewed its digital rights for the 2018 and 2019 seasons; in contrast to 2017 in which the games required an Amazon Prime subscription, for 2018 and 2019, Amazon also carries game coverage for free on its live streaming platform
Twitch. Alongside the main Fox feed, British English, and Spanish options, the Amazon Prime streams offer an alternate commentary feed featuring ESPN anchor
Hannah Storm and NFL Network chief correspondent
Andrea Kremer—the first all-female commentary team in NFL history. The Twitch streams offer access to the service's standard
chat room (along with special football-themed
emotes), an interactive extension, and co-streams featuring prominent personalities, while streams on Amazon Fire devices offer integration with the
X-Ray feature to access statistics and other content. Fox employed 45 cameras, a dual-skycam setup, triple-lens pylon cameras, and Intel True View replay systems where available.
Fox NFL Thursday originated from
Fox News Channel's Studio F in New York City, as well as an outdoor plaza setup on
Sixth Avenue (
Fox Square) with a scaled football field and an audience. A new graphics package was produced by Drive Studio, inspired by
Times Square to reflect its New York City-based studio programming; unlike CBS and NBC, Fox utilized the same in-game presentation it uses for all other NFL games broadcast by the network. For 2019, Fox announced that it would produce all of its games in
1080p upscaled to 4K, with
hybrid log–gamma (HLG)
high-dynamic-range color, beginning with its season premiere September 26, 2019. The telecasts were distributed via the Fox Sports app, Prime Video, and to participating television providers. HDR was only supported through television providers, but Fox stated that HDR and surround sound support would be enabled via streaming "soon". Due a
carriage dispute between
Dish Network and Fox resulting in the removal of its
owned-and-operated stations and cable networks, it was reported that Fox had pushed NFL Network to black out its simulcast of the October 3, 2019 game between the
Los Angeles Rams and the
Seattle Seahawks for Dish Network subscribers to prevent circumvention. However, due to a clause in Dish's carriage agreement that forbade the channel from performing provider-specific programming substitutions, NFL Network agreed to forego the simulcast entirely, and the game was made exclusive to Fox (making it the first
TNF game to not air in some capacity on NFL Network). Fox and Dish agreed to a multi-year carriage agreement on October 6, 2019. On April 29, 2020, Amazon renewed its digital rights through the 2022 season, maintaining the
TNF simulcasts and digital content, and also adding exclusive international rights to one late-season game per-season outside of the package (which will be produced by CBS). For its simulcasts, Amazon replaced the British feed with a new "Scout's Feed" with extended analysis by
Bucky Brooks and
Daniel Jeremiah (akin to the
ESPN "film room" broadcasts of college football games), and "
NFL Next Live" on Twitch (with viewer interactivity). On October 19, because of a COVID-19 outbreak involving the
Tennessee Titans, the originally scheduled Thursday Night game between the
Kansas City Chiefs and the
Buffalo Bills, was moved to the following Monday due to the Titans playing the Bills the previous Tuesday. The Chiefs won 26–17. In a similar move, the
Baltimore Ravens had their scheduled Week 13
TNF game against the
Dallas Cowboys postponed to the following Tuesday. The Ravens had dealt with their own outbreak, which included positive tests from players including reigning MVP
Lamar Jackson. For that reason, the Ravens had to postpone their Thanksgiving game against the
Pittsburgh Steelers three times, the first time was originally postponed to the Sunday after Thanksgiving in the afternoon, then postponed a second time to the following Tuesday night, then postponed again to the following Wednesday in the afternoon. The postponements forced the Steelers' Week 13 game against the
Washington Football Team to be moved from Sunday, December 6, to Monday, December 7, and as mentioned, the Cowboys-Ravens game a day later, with both games remaining on NFL Network, Fox, and Prime Video.
2022–2033: Amazon Prime Video In March 2021, Amazon acquired exclusive rights to
TNF as part of the next round of NFL broadcasting agreements from 2023 through 2033. NFL Network, Fox, and Amazon subsequently opted out of the final year of the current agreement, meaning that Amazon's rights would begin in the
2022 NFL season instead. This partnership became materialized as along with lead play-by-play announcer
Al Michaels,
Sunday Night Football producer Fred Gaudelli moved to Amazon as part of collaboration from NBC Sports; Gaudelli explained that his production operated under a notion that they needed to produce a "great" broadcast before they could start "breaking things and being different", as NFL viewers had specific expectations as to how a game should be broadcast. Jared Stacy, Amazon's head of global live sports production, stated that they were "challenged by our leadership to figure out what’s next and to take some swings". Gaudelli went as far as suggesting that the on-field down and distance graphic use Amazon's "smile" symbol as an arrow. Amazon will employ 13 "super slo-mo" cameras, two Skycams, and
TrackMan ball tracking.
Pinar Toprak composed new theme music for the telecasts. Features from the previous simulcasts of
TNF on Amazon platforms will return, including X-Ray, and broadcasts on Twitch. Amazon also plans alternate broadcasts for Prime Video and Twitch, such as one that features the sports comedy team
Dude Perfect. It was reported that Amazon was seeking advertising rates 20% higher than those of Thursday games in past seasons. Per a corporate policy prohibiting advertising that "encourage, glamorize or depict excessive consumption of alcohol" on its platforms, Amazon is not allowing commercials for alcoholic beverages to air during its telecasts (although they may still appear in advertising slots sold by the league, naturally as part of the stadium's advertising, or as part of commercial time held by local broadcasters). As with all other NFL telecasts not on national broadcast television, all
Thursday Night Football games are required to be simulcast on a broadcast television station in the home market of each participating team. In addition, Amazon reached an agreement with
Nielsen Media Research to provide
audience measurement under a three-year deal, allowing the games' viewership on Prime Video, Twitch, out-of-home, and on local broadcast stations to be tabulated in the
Nielsen ratings. Amazon carried a preseason game on August 25, 2022, featuring the
San Francisco 49ers at the
Houston Texans. Nielsen reported an average of 13 million viewers across all measured platforms, which were in line with the average numbers that were garnered by Fox's
Thursday Night Football broadcasts in the 2021 season, and an increase of five million over that year's season opener (which was an NFL Network-exclusive game). On October 18, 2022, the NFL announced that
Thursday Night Football would add a Friday afternoon game on the Friday after Thanksgiving beginning in 2023;
Thursday Night Football had taken Thanksgiving week off since. The game will compete directly with the
long-standing slate of college football games held on the Friday after Thanksgiving.
Thursday Night Football had gone on hiatus during Thanksgiving week since 2012, as the Thanksgiving primetime game had been reassigned to the
Sunday Night Football package. On March 28, 2023, following an underwhelming slate of games for the 2022 season that led to a 46% drop in viewership, significant changes were made in response to Amazon's demands for more compelling games. Starting in the 2023 season, teams are not required to have a Thursday game following a Sunday, while teams can play up to two Thursday games following a Sunday game per season. The league also approved the option of flexing Sunday games into Thursday despite overwhelming opposition from players and coaches. Up to two games from weeks 13 through 17 can be flexed with 28 days advanced notice, up from 15 days that was originally proposed. Since 2025, the flex timetable for
TNF games was reduced to 21 days before kickoff. Additionally, only games between teams that have not played two Thursday games are eligible to be flexed and the same team can’t be flexed both times. In Week 16 was the first game flexed in TNF history for a
rivalry game between the
Browns–
Bengals replace in favor of
Broncos–
Chargers game. In
2025, when Christmas Day falls on a Thursday, TNF will air their traditional game on Christmas night. In 2026, when Christmas Day falls on a Friday, TNF is likely to air their traditional game on Thursday, Christmas Eve. In early 2026, Amazon announced record high viewership for its schedule in the 2025 regular season. Games averaged 15.3 million viewers per game, from a total of 122 million total unique viewers. ==Coverage ==