It wasn’t long ago that famed sportscaster Al Michaels was openly making fun of his own Thursday Night Football schedule on Amazon Prime Video and the number of stinkers that he and Kirk Herbstreit had to call.

My how things have changed.

The NFL can giveth and taketh away when it comes to schedules and trying to please the vast number of television and streaming rightsholders that they are in partnership with. The NFL has seen games aired or simulcast on NBC, Peacock, CBS, ESPN, ESPN2, ABC, Netflix, ESPN+, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, YouTube TV, and Nickelodeon this season. And if I’m missing anyone like a Travel Channel Ghost Adventures altcast, please forgive me.

But it seems as though Michaels’ public protestations have paid off. The Thursday Night Football schedule has been ramped up with the franchise even receiving their first flex game this week with the Denver Broncos and Los Angeles Chargers fighting for a playoff berth.

But with so much in our world, pleasing all of their rightsholders shelling out billions of dollars is a zero sum game for the NFL. So if Amazon is winning, other networks are conceivably losing and getting worse games. And they are starting to notice.

Via Michael McCarthy at Front Office Sports comes a piece about some discontent at networks noticing Amazon’s good fortune in the NFL scheduling department. And how they are starting to feel slighted themselves:

The Lions-Packers nail-biter on Dec. 5 averaged a broadcast TV–worthy 17.29 million viewers, up 61% over the comparable game last season. It shattered Prime’s previous record for the most-watched TNF tilt—the Cowboys-Giants NFC East matchup on Sept. 26—by more than a million viewers.

“The NFL has slanted so far in the direction of [Prime], it’s not even funny,” an executive at a network that airs NFL games told Front Office Sports.

As salt in the wound for the TV networks, Amazon is paying the lowest amount in annual rights fees. Prime pays $1 billion a year for TNF. CBS, NBC, and Fox are on the hook for roughly $2 billion annually, and ESPN pays $2.7 billion.

Meanwhile, the strong schedule is also driving ratings for TNF’s pre- and post-game shows. Even without a lead-in, the TNF Tonight pregame show is averaging 1.60 million viewers, while the TNF Nightcap show is pulling 2.06 million. All the professional leagues are desperate to attract younger viewers. From the beginning, Prime has demonstrated an ability to attract viewers nearly seven years younger on average than its linear rivals. Through Week 15, TNF is drawing an NFL-best 2.7 million viewers under 35 per game. 

“The youth angle is one of the reasons the [NFL and NBA] are excited about Amazon,” said a source with knowledge of the situation. “They’re the next generation of fans.”

It wasn’t too long ago that ESPN was the ones complaining about their schedule for Monday Night Football and an uneasy relationship with the NFL. Then Bristol shelled out huge contracts to snatch Joe Buck and Troy Aikman from Fox, added the ManningCast, and now also has the benefit of flex scheduling on select occasions. Thanks to the investment in the product, Monday Night Football is seen as a crown jewel property once again.

The NFL making a specific push towards Amazon does make sense from the perspective that they are the only streamer that airs weekly games throughout the season. If the NFL wants to continue to push in that direction, as it’s the way all media is progressing, then it makes sense to give that audience good games.

The bigger issue at play is just how spread out and saturated the calendar is with games, though. There are still only 32 teams and a maximum of 16 games each week. And if (like this week) games are played on Thursday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday in exclusive windows… then there’s only so much content to go around. Someone is going to have to be stuck showing those Jaguars-Titans games.

[Front Office Sports]