It had been known for weeks, but now it is official that the new NFL season will begin on a Wednesday night.
The NFL announced Wednesday that it will begin its new season on Wednesday, September 9, with the annual Kickoff Game on NBC between the defending Super Bowl champion Seahawks and an opponent to be named later. The league’s International Series game from Melbourne, Australia — pitting the 49ers and Rams — will take place the following night on a network to be named later.
The Wednesday start is the first since 2012, when the league moved up its Kickoff Game a day to accommodate the final night of the Democratic National Convention (rather than playing an earlier timeslot on Thursday, as it had done for the Republican convention four years earlier).
This time around, the Wednesday start has nothing to do with presidential politics, though Congress certainly played a role. Due to the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, the NFL is prohibited from scheduling games on Friday nights (and Saturdays) from the second week of September until the third week of December. The past two years, the Friday of Week 1 fell in the first week of September, allowing the league to schedule International Series games for that night. This year, as in most years, that Friday falls in the second week.
There had been some question as to how the league could preserve is standalone primetime International Series game in Week 1 given that prohibition, and the solution was to start the season a day earlier.
When the NFL scheduled its 2012 Kickoff Game for a Wednesday night, it was the league’s first game on the day since 1948. Now, Wednesday games are becoming more common as the league expands its schedule. In the COVID-altered year of 2020, a Ravens-Steelers game originally scheduled for Thanksgiving night was postponed multiple times due to positive tests and ended up airing on the following Wednesday afternoon — drawing nearly 11 million viewers in that weekday afternoon timeslot.
Two years ago, the league initially planned to skip the Christmas Day holiday when it fell on a Wednesday, but reversed course and scheduled a doubleheader — which was facilitated by having the four participating teams play on the preceding Saturday. As might go without saying, no such accommodations need to be made for a season opener.
And the Kickoff Game may not be the only Wednesday game this season. The league was reported earlier this month to be considering a game on the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, with the participating teams scheduled for a bye in the preceding week.
