NFL announces scheduling wrinkles, including Wednesday Christmas Day games
The NFL will play on every day of the week but Tuesday this season.
In addition to its “Black Friday” game — a budding tradition that began last season — the league announced it will schedule a Week 1 game on Friday, Sept. 6, to played in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and streamed exclusively on NBC’s Peacock. That will mark the first time in more than 50 years that the NFL has played on Friday night of opening weekend.
The Philadelphia Eagles have been designated as the home team for the Brazil game, but their opponent has not been announced.
Christmas falls on a Wednesday this year, and the NFL is planning two games on that day. Because Sunday-Wednesday is too tight a turnaround, each of the four teams playing on Christmas will play the previous Saturday. In a larger sense, this conceivably allows the NFL to experiment with a Wednesday-Saturday format for future seasons.
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What’s more, Amazon’s Prime Video is getting a wild-card game. That will mark the second time a postseason game will be available exclusively via a streaming service. Peacock got a wild-card game last season.
“As media consumption habits evolve, the NFL continues to work with our partners to put our games on digital platforms where our fans are increasingly spending their time,” said Hans Schroeder, NFL executive vice president of media distribution.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
