Thursday Night Football voice Al Michaels is reportedly set to remain in the role next season.
Both Michaels and his employers at Amazon Prime Video expect him to return to the TNF booth next season, Andrew Marchand of The Athletic reported Wednesday. Michaels, who turned 80 this year, is in the third and final season of his original TNF contract.
Per Marchand, any future deals with Amazon will be one-year contracts, which is not uncommon for broadcasters of advanced age such as Hubie Brown or Dick Vitale.
Michaels was the voice of NBC’s Sunday Night Football from its 2006 debut through the end of the 2021-22 season before losing the role as part of NBC’s succession plan with Mike Tirico. He was to continue calling an annual playoff game for NBC, but lost that role after an underwhelming performance on a Chargers-Jaguars Wild Card game in 2023. He is set to return to the postseason this year, as Amazon has rights to a Wild Card game.
Prior to joining Amazon, Michaels was mentioned as a contender for ESPN’s Monday Night Football vacancy, but was passed over in favor of Joe Buck. There had also been some talk about him replacing Buck on FOX.
Earlier in his career, Michaels was the face of ABC Sports from the end of the Howard Cosell era to the network’s loss of Monday Night Football after the 2005-06 NFL season. He called the Super Bowl, World Series and NBA Finals for the network and briefly hosted its studio coverage of the Stanley Cup Final.
He was originally set to continue his relationship with ABC parent Disney after MNF shifted to ESPN — agreeing to an eight-year deal to call the series for the cable network — but was later let out of that contract to join NBC (in a trade that won Disney the rights to Oswald, the Lucky Rabbit).
