NFL Reportedly Won't Schedule Game on Black Friday for 2022 Regular Season

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The NFL had been exploring the possibility of scheduling a game on Black Friday for the 2022 season, but that reportedly is no longer expected to happen.

Peter King of NBC Sports reports that the league will not play a Black Friday game on Amazon Prime or any network this year because of a slew of scheduling conflicts. King noted it's likely that a game will be scheduled on that day in 2023.

Not only would a Black Friday game lead to a seventh nationally-televised matchup that weekend, it would also fall on the same afternoon of a World Cup soccer match between the United States and England.

In February, John Ourand of Sports Business Journal reported that Amazon "made a little bit of noise" about potentially scheduling a game for Black Friday. However, Ourand noted that the NFL wasn't particularly open to the notion.

"A Black Friday game would complement Amazon’s e-commerce business, and it would be similar to its Premier League strategy in Britain, where it carries all of the league’s Boxing Day games," Ourand wrote. "But this store may be closed; the NFL has been lukewarm to this idea."

The main issue with a Black Friday game is the league's broadcast antitrust exemption, which prohibits the NFL from scheduling games on Fridays before mid-December.

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According to Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio, "In exchange for the ability to sell the TV rights for all games in a bulk package and not on a team-by-team basis, the league can’t broadcast games on Fridays or Saturdays from the second Friday in September through the second Saturday in December."

The full NFL schedule is set to be released on May 12.