On Thursday Feb. 2 NFL commissioner Roger Goodell announced that “Thursday Night Football” games on NFL Network would increase next season.
See Goodell’s statement.
The NFL plans on broadcasting Thursday night games from week two to week fifteen of the regular season. The deal would add 5 games to the NFL Network’s lineup.
“We think it’s good for the fans,” Goodell said.
That’s an interesting statement, because I’m a fan and that doesn’t really work for me. If the NFL Network adds five games that means local broadcasters such as CBS and Fox will loose five games. Other games will likely be broadcast in their place, but the idea that fans need to have a premium television service to watch their local team is absolutely ridiculous.
When questioned about the fact that there are several cable companies nationwide that don’t carry the NFL Network Goodell firmly stated, “the market has spoken, the NFL Network is here.”
Obviously the market has not spoken. After several years on the air, the NFL Network is still struggling with carriage deals with some of the nation’s largest premium television providers.
Before the 2011 season a spokesman for the Cablevision provider told the New York Post, “If the NFL really cared about cable customers being able to see their games, they would make Sunday Ticket available to cable customers, which they have refused to do.”
Capitalism works on supply and demand, if large networks such as Time Warner and Cablevision aren’t touching your network perhaps it’s because the demand isn’t great enough. Perhaps Goodell’s refusal to grant them rights to the Sunday Ticket packages makes it not worth it to them to carry the NFL Network. Perhaps, not everyone in America is a football fan.
Another alleged advantage to increasing the number of Thursday night games according to Goodell is that every team will now have an opportunity to appear on a prime time broadcast throughout the season. I certainly can’t speak for all NFL fans, but the last thing I want to spend good money on is to watch the Cleveland Browns and Cincinnati Bengals duke it out for last place on prime time television.
A fact that wasn’t mentioned in the news conference is the simple truth that most people have to go to work on Friday morning. I suppose hardcore fans will buy the correct package from the correct cable provider and watch the game at home, but what about the millions of people who have one of the dark horse cable providers and don’t fancy the idea of going out to a bar to watch football on a weeknight? I suppose Goodell’s answer would be to switch cable providers.
After Goodell said this move would be good for the fans, he continued the thought by saying, “it will be good for the network as well.”
This move is carefully crafted to operate under the guise that the NFL is doing its fans some kind of favor. What it really boils down to is another power play in the NFL’s ongoing feud with the nation’s large media providers. In the end, the only losers are the fans.