The third spring football league in four years will debut with significant television exposure.
The opening game of the new United States Football League — the New Jersey Generals against the Birmingham Stallions — is scheduled to be simulcast in primetime on both NBC and FOX Saturday, April 16, it was announced Tuesday. NBC will handle pregame, halftime and postgame segments while Fox will produce the game telecast.
In a joint announcement, NBC and FOX said the game will be the first “scheduled” sports competition to be simulcast across two broadcast networks since the first Super Bowl aired on both NBC and CBS. (If technically correct, it should be noted that the 2007 Patriots-Giants game in which New England clinched an undefeated season aired across both NBC and CBS. That game was originally scheduled to air exclusively on NFL Network before Congressional pressure led the NFL to add the two over-the-air simulcasts.)
The double coverage marks the most aggressive effort yet to launch a spring football league. Two years ago, the second iteration of the XFL debuted with three games on two broadcast networks over its opening weekend, but each game aired on only one network — and none aired in primetime. The Alliance of American Football debuted three years ago with a primetime regional window on CBS.
As previously announced, the FOX and NBC broadcast networks are scheduled to air a combined 22 of the 43 total USFL games this season, assuming all of them are played. The AAF and XFL both folded midseason, though the latter faced some extenuating circumstances. The remaining USFL windows are set for USA Network (nine games), Peacock (four games) and Fox Sports 1 (eight).
While broadcast networks rarely carry simulcasts of the same sporting events, it is not wholly uncommon on cable. ESPN and Fox Sports last fall carried a joint production of the Tyson Fury-Deontay Wilder heavyweight boxing fight on their respective pay-per-view platforms. HBO and Showtime jointly produced the 2015 Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao fight for pay-per-view and shared coverage of a Anthony Joshua-Wladimir Klitschko fight two years later (though Showtime had the live broadcast and HBO aired the replay).
[News from network PR]
