Thanksgiving weekend is likely going to get even better.
According to Sports Business Journal’s John Ourand, the NFL will have a game on Black Friday starting in 2023. Amazon, the new exclusive rightsholder for Thursday Night Football, is going to be streaming the game.
According to Ourand, the league could wait until 2024 to begin its scheduling for the day after Thanksgiving, but “all signs point to 2023” for the new tradition.
Peter King of NBC Sports first reported the possibility of a Black Friday game and said Amazon made a bid worth $70-100 million for the rights to a Black Friday game.
The league decided against adding a contest in 2022 because it would’ve had to compete against the World Cup match between the United States and England. The NFL shows three contests on Thanksgiving Day plus prime-time games on Sunday and Monday nights. This would add yet another nationally televised game to that weekend’s slate.
Lastly, Ourand noted that Amazon already gets a crazy amount of traffic on Black Friday as a shopping platform, which could push even more viewers to the NFL game.
