First the NFL came for the NBA’s claim to Christmas Day. Now it is coming for college football’s claim to Black Friday. Despite earlier reports that the league was not high on the idea of an Amazon exclusive game the day after Thanksgiving, Peter King writes that he expects it to be a reality soon.
“The deal’s not done yet. It’s not as easy as it seems,” King writes in his Football Morning in America column. “There’s some opposition in the league about playing a game on Nov. 25, and there’s a decent chance the NFL will put off a Black Friday game on Amazon Prime till 2023. But it’s going to happen, I’m told, by next year at the latest.”
King writes that Amazon is aggressive in its pursuit of the exclusive and it is willing to pay big money. The company is willing to bid between $70 million and $100 million on the game. That is a price in keeping with what networks pay for a Wild Card Game. It would also be money paid on top of what Amazon is already paying for its Thursday Night Football deal.
There is a reason the company is willing to shell out that kind of money. King points out that a Black Friday game is more valuable to Amazon than it would be to any other NFL media partner.
“What better marketing tool for Amazon Prime than to put a game in the wheelhouse of their consumers, on the busiest shopping day of the year? With so many shoppers eschewing brick-and-mortar stores in favor of shopping from the couch, imagine the marketing heft when commercials can be targeted at stay-at-home shoppers.”
Why is the deal not done yet? Peter King reports the NFL has a lot of hurdles to clear. Namely, there is still serious opposition in the league office. On top of that, it isn’t just the typical Black Friday college football slate the game will be competing with. The US Men’s National Team has a match against England scheduled at 2 pm that day as part of the World Cup in Qatar.
