NFL, Amazon Announce Black Friday Game Starting with 2023 Season; Teams TBD

Amazon and the NFL are expanding their deal to include a game on Black Friday for the 2023 season.

The league and Amazon announced Tuesday that Prime Video will be the exclusive streaming home for a game on Nov. 24, 2023, that is expected to kick off at 3 p.m. ET.

The teams playing in the first-ever Black Friday game have yet to be determined.

John Ourand of Sports Business Journal reported in August the NFL was adding a Friday game to the schedule during Thanksgiving week starting in 2023.

Per Michael David Smith of Pro Football Talk, the afternoon kickoff is likely because the NFL's antitrust exemption prevents the league from televising games in prime time on Friday nights in November.

The NFL and Amazon entered into an 11-year media rights agreement in March 2021 that made the tech giant the exclusive streaming home for Thursday Night Football.

This season marks the first year of the deal that is paying the NFL around $1 billion annually. The historic deal made Amazon the first streaming service to get exclusive rights to NFL games.

The NFL's contract with Amazon came at the same time the league negotiated new rights deals with ESPN/ABC, Fox and NBC. All of the deals run through the 2033 season and add up to more than $100 billion over the life of the contracts.

Amazon's NFL schedule for this season includes 15 regular-season games. It started in Week 2 and wraps up in Week 17 with a matchup between the Dallas Cowboys and Tennessee Titans on Dec. 29.

The announcement of a Black Friday game next season means the NFL will likely have games on Thursday, Friday, Sunday and Monday during Thanksgiving week.

The last NFL game to be played on a Friday was on Christmas Day during the 2020 season. The New Orleans Saints defeated the Minnesota Vikings 52-33 at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome on Dec. 25, 2020.