We’re still a few months away from the NFL announcing the full 2023 regular season schedule, but one of the questions lingering ahead of the start of the new season is who will the Kansas City Chiefs host on opening night.
The Chiefs will be the home team against the Bills, Bengals, Dolphins, Bears, Lions and Eagles in addition to their usual AFC West matchups.
In Peter King’s Football Morning in America newsletter on Monday, there’s speculation that we could see a Super Bowl rematch on opening night between the Chiefs and Eagles. But King wrote that if the NFL goes with that, it would be a bit of a surprise as the league obviously wants to preserve some matchups for the defending champs for other prime TV windows.
“The NFL has a lot of network mouths to feed, and could use KC games versus the Eagles, Bills and Bengals as tentpole events for the NBC, CBS and ESPN schedules,” King wrote. “Maybe Eagles-KC on an October Sunday night on NBC, Bengals-KC on a CBS doubleheader game in a November Sunday late-afternoon window, and Bills-KC as the highlight of the ESPN slate.”
King mentioned that the NFL usually tends to keep certain marquee matchups off the opening night slate. But the NFL does want the best possible ratings for the first regular season game of the year. So regardless of who the Chiefs line up against in September, the league seems confident that it will do well with viewers.
“One league person told me something to keep in mind about the opener: In the last two years, the NFL put ratings-drivers on opening night—and the one thing the league won’t want is a headline a day or two after the game reading, Ratings down 11 percent for NFL opener,” King wrote. “However, the fact that the 2022 game drew an audience of a modest (for an opener) 21.3 million for the non-competitive Bills-Rams game probably means the NFL will get an increase even if Kansas City’s foe is not the Bengals, Bills or Eagles.”
