Report: 'Thursday Night Football' is heading to Fox next season

If you’re eager to watch the start of the Pat Mahomes era with the Kansas City Chiefs next season, you might want to make sure you have the right channel. “Thursday Night Football” is reportedly moving to Fox in 2018, according to John Ourand of Sports Business Journal.

Ourand reported Fox had outbid both CBS and NBC to take over “Thursday Night Football” last week. The company apparently closed in on that deal Tuesday.

As in recent years, Fox will have to share some of the rights for “Thursday Night Football.” NFL Network will still be allowed to broadcast games, and a separate digital partner will also be involved. As Ourand said in his tweet, Amazon ran the digital package last year, but those rights are still undetermined for 2018. Another company could outbid them.

While it’s still early in the process, Ourand also said Fox’s top broadcast duo, Joe Buck and Troy Aikman, were likely not going to do “Thursday Night Football.”

If that’s the case, the duo would most likely remain in their normal Sunday spot, which is almost always a nationally broadcast contest.

After starting out exclusively on CBS, “Thursday Night Football” was split between both CBS and NBC the past two seasons. With the Fox news, neither station will host the program in 2018.

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Chris Cwik is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at christophercwik@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Chris_Cwik

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