As an NFL fan, I’ve been happy to see games being postponed from Sunday afternoons to Tuesdays in primetime. It’s unfortunate that we didn’t get here until the coronavirus changed our lives, but I wouldn’t mind seeing it made permanent.
I’m sure there are already discussions going on at NFL HQ about what the broadcast and streaming rights to an additional weeknight slate of games would be worth. Considering how low ratings have sunk for a lot of linear television, there would surely be at least a couple of networks (ESPN, Fox Sports, TBS/TNT) that would be happy to pre-empt their sitcoms, dramas, and reality shows to air more of the most popular sport in America, which regularly draws more viewers.
Or perhaps Amazon, which streams the current slate of Thursday night games in a deal with Fox and NFL Network, could buy the exclusive rights to Tuesday nights, too. The games could still be broadcast on regular TV in the teams’ home markets, but the rest of us who don’t live in an NFL city could watch via the Prime Video stream. I have already praised the alternate audio Amazon offers on Thursday nights, with Hannah Storm and Andrea Kremer so much more listenable than Joe Buck and Troy Aikman.
The NFL and Amazon seems like a perfect match — a greedy league that wants every penny it can get its hands on and one of the most successful streaming companies in the world, which happens to have a few pennies to spend. And, unlike Netflix and Peacock and Disney+ and Apple TV and HBO Max, Amazon already has the capacity to live-stream the games.
However the deal for a new Tuesday Night Football series is structured, it would have to come with a rebate guarantee if the schedulers put either the Jets or Jaguars in that slot.