News: Amazon-NFL, Rece Davis and more

Amazon’s anticipated Thursday Night Football deal would include “many” exclusive games, according to The Wall Street Journal. Plus: Rece Davis does soccer, and more.

Amazon would carry Thursday night games exclusively, per WSJ

Amazon is close to a deal to carry “many” Thursday Night Football games exclusively, rather than simulcasting them with NFL Network, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. The games would not be available on any traditional television network outside of the home markets.

Only a handful of NFL games have been carried exclusively via a streaming platform, most recently 49ers-Cardinals on Amazon this past December.

Per WSJ, NFL Network would still air a “handful” of games in the TNF package, as it is required under its carriage agreements to air at least five games per season. To this point, NFL Network has aired every game ever played in the TNF package, even if most of those have been simulcasts of late.

Amazon could pay as much as $1 billion/year for the Thursday night package, according to the report. [WSJ 3.3]

ESPN’s Davis to host “Euro 2020” as part of new deal

ESPN announced this week that it has reached a contract extension with College Gameday host Rece Davis, who will continue in his current roles and host coverage of this summer’s scheduled UEFA “Euro 2020” soccer tournament — his first such assignment since 2008. Davis has been with ESPN since 1995. [ESPN PR 3.1]

Plus: Irv Cross, Mike Pearl, Kevin Mayer, WNBA

Former CBS NFL analyst Irv Cross died over the weekend at age 81. Cross was part of the “NFL Today” team that included Brent Musburger, Phyllis George and Jimmy “the Greek” Snyder. … Longtime sports television executive Mike Pearl, who produced the aforementioned “NFL Today” and Turner’s “Inside the NBA” in those shows’ formative years, recently died at age 77. … Former Disney executive Kevin Mayer is replacing John Skipper as chairman of DAZN, it was announced Wednesday. … ESPN is scheduled to carry this year’s full WNBA Draft, per an ESPN advance schedule, marking the second-straight year the flagship has carried the event. Prior to last year, the draft aired on ESPN2 and ESPNU. [ESPN.com 2.28, Sports Video Group 3.1, Front Office Sports 3.3, ESPN PR]

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Jon Lewis

Jon Lewis has been covering the sports media industry on a daily basis since 2006 as the founder and main writer of Sports Media Watch. You can contact him here or on the social media websites X (Twitter) or Bluesky.

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Comments 3

Nate Johnson says:

5 years ago

I’m not sure how to feel about the TNF being mostly exclusive on Amazon Prime. For one, the NFL made their ends meet with the deal being nearly a 36% increase from what FOX and Amazon is paying or the TNF rights and how much is reported Amazon will pay the NFL for the next round of TNF rights. With that said, the NFL is pretty much diluted their own network in a major way. They’re essentially saying we will allow a digital platform to showcase a majority of our games that we created the content of. I understand money makes people move in certain direction, but this is pretty much the NFL waiving the white flag on what they created and what they would demand how their content would be ran and allow Amazon to do what they want to do with it only to receive a profit. That’s not the NFL I know.

I do believe this could be game changer though. For one, I’ll be honest I didn’t watch much of the 49ers/Cards game on Amazon Prime last December, but one thing I believe that needs to be taken from the digital streamed games is to have less commercial ads and continuous actions. When I watch sporting events on ESPN+, I noticed how quicker the football and basketball games be and it’s all because the ads are much shorter than if it was telecast by a network. It reminded me of baseball games shown locally vs. nationally vs. the All-Star game vs. the Postseason vs. World Series. Some goes by quicker than others and sure, the bigger the game the longer it will take because of the implications, but for TNF case it won’t be on the level of the postseason of course. So that would be the key thing I will look forward to seeing.

Another would be, will these games be shown in sports bars. When I go to Buffalo Wild Wings I can watch a UFC PPV fight. I thought that was in jeopardy when ESPN+ took over the PPV exclusive but you can still watch UFC PPV there. As a matter of fact, I was at a sports bar called Wings Etc. (pretty big in the mid-west, but towards the southeast/coastal more of a hole in a wall) that was showing UFC PPV and I didn’t believe they would show it until they did. So my point is that how can that work for the NFL? The reason that is so important is to keep the relation of the NFL product and sports bars in tact because for nearly 3-decades that has helped grow the NFL brand when fans could go to a bar that had Sunday Ticket and watch out of market games and watch teams that they love from far away.
- NaBUru38 says:
  
  5 years ago
  
  ESPN cares about revenue from bars. Amazon probably doesn’t.
esl says:

5 years ago

RIP to the great Irv Cross. Part of the most influential NFL Studio show in history, The NFL Today. Irv was the first African American host on the NFL. Phyllis George was the first female to host on the NFL, and Jimmy the Greek Snyder was the first gambling prognosticator on an NFL show. With Brent Musburger leading the way, this show was incredibly innovative in it’s day. For everyone like Sam Ponder, James Brown, and all the fantasy shows and gambling web sites like draft kings, they all owe a debt of gratitude to this pregame show. The NFL today does not get enough credit for it’s impact.