Will NFL punish Fox with weak schedule after Murdoch pressure campaign?

The NFL will formally reveal its broadcast schedule for next season on Thursday, and as always, there will be winners and losers. For broadcasters, the schedule release is as important as the NFL Draft is for the league’s 32 teams. A strong schedule can send ad buyers into a tizzy trying to buy up valuable commercial inventory, while a comparatively weak schedule can put networks behind the eight-ball against their peers touting better games.

This year’s schedule could look particularly rough for one network, should the NFL choose to be vindictive.

Last week, the public received confirmation of what the NFL likely knew for months: Rupert Murdoch and Fox were mounting a pressure campaign against the league, leveraging a strong connection with President Donald Trump to encourage federal investigations into the NFL’s broadcast practices by the Department of Justice and Federal Communications Commission. The investigations cut directly to the heart of the NFL’s business model, threatening a limited antitrust exemption that allows the league to bundle the broadcast rights of its 32 teams. Fox’s hope is that federal pressure could encourage the NFL to keep the vast majority of its games on broadcast television, rather than transition to streaming, whenever the next set of rights deals are negotiated.

It was a power play unlike we’ve ever seen against the behemoth that is the NFL, and one that could backfire for Fox. Neither the FCC inquiry nor the DOJ investigation is expected to result in any tangible action against the league. And if the NFL decides to replace one of its current broadcast partners with a streamer, Fox could find itself on the outside looking in, losing the league entirely.

More immediately, however, the NFL could slap Fox on the wrist by watering down its 2026-27 schedule. It’s a tactic the NFL has used in the past. Remember how poor some of the Monday Night Football schedules got in the late 2010s? It wasn’t a coincidence. It was because the NFL wasn’t happy that ESPN was doing extensive reporting on issues that were tricky for the league: concussions, players staging social justice protests, Roger Goodell’s salary, etc. That period also coincided with one of the worst lead NFL broadcast booths in recent memory: Joe Tessitore, Jason Witten, and Booger McFarland.

The NFL gave Monday Night Football horrible schedules until ESPN fell in line. The network went out and got Joe Buck and Troy Aikman from Fox. Programs like Outside the Line were canceled, leaving fewer avenues for ESPN to air negative coverage of the NFL. And all of a sudden, Monday Night Football began getting better games.

Will the NFL deploy a similar playbook for Fox? The network, of course, doesn’t have the same broadcaster problem as ESPN did circa 2018. But it has certainly done enough damage to the NFL with its political gambit to warrant retribution.

So far, there’s little indication Fox’s schedule will be tangibly hurt by its behind-the-scenes maneuvering. Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch announced today that the network will get two additional NFL regular-season games this year: the first a Week 10 international game from Munich, the second a Saturday game in Week 15.

Further, there’s only so much the league can do if it wants to water down Fox’s schedule. Fox is in line to air the Dallas Cowboys on Thanksgiving Day, which automatically gives the network one of the largest audiences of the year, no matter what team the Cowboys play. Additionally, reports indicate that Fox will get a primetime Christmas Day game following Netflix’s doubleheader this season, which is sure to capture another huge audience.

Where Fox could feel the pain, however, is during its run-of-the-mill Sunday-afternoon slates. Networks typically submit “wish lists” to the NFL of which games they covet the most, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see those highly coveted games go to other networks this season. And now, with the AFC and NFC designations for CBS and Fox less stringent than in years past, there is more flexibility for the NFL to favor one network over another if it chooses to do so.

That’s not to say the NFL will take the vindictive route. Murdoch told investors on Monday there was “no tension” between the league and the network, though some reporters would beg to differ.

Regardless, the league wants to do everything in its power to maximize viewership; it won’t make inefficient scheduling decisions just to spite Fox. But Fox’s schedule will be the story to watch on Thursday. The network has lost the Sunday afternoon ratings battle with CBS for three consecutive seasons, something that was unthinkable for many years, given the market and brand dominance of the NFC. No doubt, Fox wants to take back the Sunday afternoon throne. But the NFL could make that effort more difficult than it would have been if it weren’t for Fox’s backroom dealings. The only question now is if the NFL will choose to do so.