The NFL’s Week 16 schedule includes a rare triple title on Saturday, however, which won’t be the only rare thing on the list of games scheduled for December 26. For the second time, the NFL has granted exclusive rights to a game to an Internet company.
If you have the NFL Network, you can watch the game from 1:00 pm (Buccaneers at Lions) and 8:15 pm ET (Dolphins at Raiders) on Saturday, but you will not be able to watch the mid-game between 49ers and the Cardinals, which is scheduled for 4:30 pm ET.
The only way to watch this game is by streaming it through Amazon Prime or Twitch. The NFL granting exclusive rights to a regular season game to a non-television network is a very rare thing that almost never happens. The only other time the league allowed a streaming company to broadcast a game was in 2017, when Yahoo received the rights to a Ravens-Jaguars game that was played in London.
This time, Amazon won an independent game as part of a new streaming deal that the internet giant signed with the NFL in April. The agreement not only gave Amazon the right to broadcast the games from Thursday until 2022, but the agreement also included a game for Amazon that would not be available on any national TV network and that game is what is being played on Saturday afternoon in Arizona.
It is clear that the NFL will not completely abandon televisions because of that game. According to the league’s broadcast rules, all games must be available on over-the-air TV in the markets of the two teams playing, which means that the only way to watch the 49ers-Cardinals game on television is living in Phoenix (where it airs on Fox-10) or if you live in San Francisco (where it airs in the NBC Bay Area). Everyone else will have to watch on Amazon Prime or Twitch.
In fact, the game is being produced by CBS, which means that you will see some familiar faces like Andrew Catalon (game by game), James Lofton (analyst) and Sherree Burruss (side) if you watch the Amazon stream.
If you’re wondering why the NFL would give Amazon a standalone game, there are several reasons. On the one hand, Amazon paid a lot of money for this, but more importantly, it allows the league to find out what the national appetite for games is only available through streaming. The current NFL deal with television with each network is set to expire after the 2022 season (ESPN expires after the 2021 season), which means the league is currently in talks to extend them. One of the options of the NFL could be to sell some kind of streaming package and if that happens, don’t be surprised to get involved with the Sunday Ticket, which is already on DirecTV.
According to the Sports Business Journal, Amazon Prime Video, ESPN +, NBCUniversal’s Peacock and DAZN are all potentially interested in obtaining Sunday Ticket rights, which would allow them to broadcast games off the market to anyone who subscribes. According New York Post, Amazon may also end up trying to acquire the exclusive rights to “Thursday Night Football”, so a lot may be changing in streaming as bids for NFL games are discussed in the coming months.
Anyway, if you’ve already forgotten how to watch every Saturday game in week 16, here’s a quick reminder:
- Buccaneers at Lions: 1 pm ET (NFL Network)
- 49ers at Cardinals: 4:30 pm ET (Amazon Prime Video and Twitch)
- Dolphins in Raiders: 8:15 pm Eastern Time (NFL Network)
Buccaneers will guarantee a playoff spot with a victory over Lions, while Raiders will be officially eliminated if they lose to the Dolphins.