(New York Post) When the NFL announces its attendance for each game, it really should refer to the crowd as its studio audience or extras or ambient noise providers.
The fans are just there to provide the background for the TV show.
To prove it, in his latest act of greed, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has enacted flexible scheduling for “Thursday Night Football.” It is designed to make sure streaming works so the billion a year that Amazon Prime Video currently pays for TNF can become two billion in seven years, when the league has an opt-out, or 11 seasons when the contract ends.
The hundreds or even thousands of dollars the average fan pays to attend games don’t matter. The billionaire owners need more, more, more. It’s never enough.
This week, pushed by Goodell, NFL owners voted 24-8 to allow flex scheduling during the final five Thursday-night games of the regular season (weeks 13-17). If one more owner had showed a soul, the proposal would not have passed.
Instead it means if you bought tickets for a Sunday game, it may be moved to Thursday with just four weeks notice. You had a trip with friends with a flight and hotel and getting off work that you were arriving Friday for a Sunday game. Well, that might just be played Thursday, the day before your flight was taking off. The NFL doesn’t care about you.
They care about money. That’s it. (This doesn’t even take into account the other poor slouch, whose Thursday night ticket will now be turned into a Sunday afternoon game.)
Roger Goodell’s Thursday Night Football flex plan only serves to give more money to NFL owners.Getty Images for YouTube
In a sign that it doesn’t feel right, there were immediate reports about how the NFL won’t use TNF flex unless it is an emergency, which might mean something a bit different to a billionaire owner than to someone setting a budget to wedge in affording travel to a game.
The reason the NFL enacted TNF flex is because they want streaming games to work. With the diminishing of cable, NFL executives view streaming as the next frontier to build on the 11-year, $110 billion deals that start this season.
Those deals, with Amazon, ESPN, Fox, CBS and NBC, all include outs in seven years that the NFL has circled. If the league can make Amazon Prime Video a success, then it hopes to entice the likes of Apple to the negotiating table. The NFL cares about Tim Cook, not Joe Fan.
