Here’s why Thursday Night Football isn’t going anywhere, anytime soon.
According to John Ourand of Sports Business Daily, the winning bid submitted by Fox for the NFL’s Thursday Night Football package is worth $550 million a year. He also reports that the top Fox broadcast team of Joe Buck and Troy Aikman will not call the games.
The previous deal saw NBC and CBS share the package, which paid the league $450 million a year the last two years.
Fox will get 11 Thursday games for their money, and those games will be simulcast on the NFL Network. They’re still working on the digital component of the deal.
The report says that CBS and NBC submitted bids that were smaller than their current deals. That probably made it easy for the NFL, which combats numbers which show declining ratings with numbers like these, that they can fold and put in their wallets.