The Super Bowl rotation will soon be skipping a beat.
Since 2006, the networks carrying the Super Bowl — NBC, CBS, FOX — have broadcast the game, one year at a time. That rhythm will be disrupted after the next Super Bowl, according to Andrew Marchand of the New York Post.
Super Bowl LIV from Miami will be broadcast by FOX. Then, instead of Super Bowl LV (in Tampa) being televised by NBC, CBS will re-enter the picture. The next year, NBC will take the CBS spot, televising Super Bowl LVI from L.A.
NBC wants to once again have both the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics in the same month. CBS wants to not televise the Super Bowl at a time when the Winter Olympics are being televised.
That year, the Winter Olympics begin on February 4 from Beijing, and the Super Bowl will be played on February 6. This means that NBC will be, on the first Sunday of the Olympics, balancing coverage of the games with the typically extra-long Super Bowl pregame show.
Marchand reports that there will be no compensation to CBS as a result of the swap, which gives NBC the first Super Bowl to be played in L.A. since the Rose Bowl hosted Super Bowl XXVII in early 1993.
FOX will then presumably have the next Super Bowl, the last game of the current cycle of broadcast contracts. And if in the next set of broadcast deals ABC enters the Super Bowl rotation and the other networks remain in place, NBC could end up having the Super Bowl in every Olympics year.