Loading...
Over the years, the NFL has slowly expanded its slate of offering to the point where not just Sunday, but now Monday and Thursday all feature high-profile games broadcast across the nation. In 2023 the league introduced the first ever Black Friday game, and this is intended to be an annual tradition with the Raiders and Chiefs playing on Black Friday 2024.
We are going to take a closer look at why the Black Friday games have come into being, as well as the reasons we don’t see the NFL scheduling games every Friday of the season.
The reason we don’t generally get to see NFL games on Fridays goes back to the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961. This Act includes provisions to protect high school and college football from competition with pro games.
Here is the relevant section from the Act:
“The antitrust exemption provided by this Act shall not apply to any joint agreement by which professional football contests are to be televised into the home territory of a member club of a league on any Friday after 6 p.m. or on any Saturday during the period beginning on the second Friday in September and ending on the second Saturday in December.”
In other words, the NFL cannot schedule Friday evening or Saturday games during Fall, as this might have a negative impact on attendances and coverage of high school and college games.
However, the Black Friday NFL games get around this by starting earlier in the day – 3pm Eastern in the case of the 2024 edition – meaning that the majority of the game will be done before the 6pm cut-off time.
Amazon Prime will stream the Black Friday NFL games, growing the partnership between the league and streaming platform which has now been going strong for many years. Amazon streamed their first NFL game back in September 2017, when the Bears played the Packers at Lambeau. These days Amazon Prime Video broadcasts the Thursday Night Football games each week, and Black Friday is an addition to their portfolio of games.
Of course Black Friday is one of the biggest shopping days of the year, and Amazon is many people’s destination of choice for at least some of that shopping. Tying Amazon to the Black Friday game was a no-brainer on both sides, with the NFL benefitting from a larger-than-usual audience at home for the holidays and Amazon hoping to incentivize more people to sign up to Prime.
Here’s what Hans Schroeder, chief operating officer for the NFL, had to say in a press release when the Black Friday game was first revealed in 2023:
“Thanksgiving is synonymous with football and we’re excited to give our fans another day of NFL action during this holiday weekend. Amazon is uniquely positioned to partner with us for this game as Black Friday is one of the most important days of the year for their business.”
The Black Friday NFL tradition is only just beginning, but here are the scores on the board so far:
| Date | Final Score | Location |
|---|---|---|
| November 24, 2023 | Miami Dolphins 34 – New York Jets 13 | MetLife Stadium, East Rutherford, NJ |
| November 29, 2024 | Las Vegas Raiders 17 – Kansas City Chiefs 19 | Arrowhead Stadium, Kansas City, MO |
We fully expect that the Black Friday game will become a fixture on the NFL calendar, meaning fans of football will be as stuffed as turkeys over the Thanksgiving weekend for years to come.
Ross has been writing about sports for over a decade, spcecializing in the NFL, soccer and boxing. His written work has appeared on a number of online publications over that time.