Fox is in line to acquire two additional NFL games this season, the company’s CEO Lachlan Murdoch said during an investor call on Monday morning, per Brian Steinberg of Variety.
The announcement from Murdoch likely means Fox secured two of the five games that reports last week first indicated would be split among Netflix and YouTube. Soon after those initial reports were filed, subsequent reports indicated that YouTube had “balked” at the idea of splitting the games with Netflix, and that Netflix would receive three of the five games available for purchase, expanding its total package to five games when including the Christmas Day doubleheader, leaving two additional games for the NFL to sell. Those games, it was reported last week, were being shopped to broadcast networks after YouTube seemingly backed out.
Jon Lewis at Sports Media Watch later confirmed that one of the aforementioned games is among the two leftover from that slate of games, with the other extra game going to NBC.
On the earnings call, Murdoch revealed that the two additional regular-season games would be scheduled for Week 10, creating the first-ever “tripleheader” in broadcast television history. Fox will air an international game from Munich, Germany, in the morning, leading into a traditional early-afternoon and late-afternoon schedule. The second game will be played on Saturday in Week 15.
Four of the five games the NFL took to market were previously allocated to ESPN as Monday Night Football doubleheaders. The inventory was returned to the league as part of its recently approved equity deal with ESPN. The fifth available game was reportedly the Week 1 game from Australia, which appears to be headed to Netflix.
Adding games to Fox’s schedule would help make sense of prior reporting that the NFL will slightly increase its presence on broadcast television this season, a decision that comes amid federal scrutiny of the transition of games from linear television to streaming. Fox, as previously reported, has also secured rights to a primetime Christmas Day game following the Netflix doubleheader. Last season, that game aired on Prime Video.
The news also comes shortly after a bombshell Wall Street Journal report published last week, which described a pressure campaign by Fox Corporation founder Rupert Murdoch in which he urged President Donald Trump to investigate the NFL’s media-rights practices.
On Monday’s call, Lachlan Murdoch said, “There is no tension really with the NFL,” despite Fox’s apparent efforts to pressure the league.
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.