Report: NFL may cut back or end ‘Thursday Night Football’

The NFL is well aware that its Thursday Night Football product has, at times, been of rather questionable quality. As such, they are reportedly considering big changes.

According to Mike Florio of ProFootballTalk, the league is considering reducing or even eliminating the “Thursday Night Football” package after the broadcast contracts with NBC and CBS expire following the 2017 season.

The NFL is aware that, due to the necessity to ensure that teams don’t have multiple short weeks during a season, the games are not necessarily going to be marquee matchups. They also know that with Sunday and Monday night games, there is a wariness to put too much football on during evenings.

It’s also noted that “Thursday Night Football” was originally conceived as a plan to provide exclusive content for NFL Network, thus allowing them to charge higher fees to providers. A source told Florio that the revenue generated by the games is not high enough that it would be too much to bear for it to be eliminated.

If the league really wants to keep the package, one option could be to begin Thursday night games weekly on Thanksgiving and then run them through December, which could allow the league and its TV partners to pick better games.

The league has tried all sorts of things to drum up interest in Thursday night games, but they’ve never really caught on. It makes sense to reconsider whether it’s worth the trouble.