Why the NFL is playing its first season opener on a Friday since 1970

Already the most popular and valuable sports league in the U.S., the NFL has taken steps in recent years to become even more dominant. The league has expanded internationally, added games on holidays, signed new broadcast partners and tried to make the sport ubiquitous.

As the 2024 season begins this weekend, no game highlights the league’s recent business ventures more than the Philadelphia Eagles’ matchup with the Green Bay Packers in Sao Paulo, Brazil. It will be the NFL’s first game in South America. It will air on Peacock, NBC’s streaming service, rather than a broadcast network. And it will be the first NFL opener on a Friday since 1970.

The NFL has for years held weekly games on Thursday and Monday nights, as well as a full schedule on Sunday afternoons and evenings. However, the league has largely avoided games on Fridays and Saturdays, thanks to an unclear law.

The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 provided the NFL and other leagues with an antitrust exemption for broadcasting. The act states that no professional football games can be played on Friday nights after 6:00 p.m. or on any Saturday from the second weekend in September through the second weekend in December. This applies to any professional football game that takes place within 75 miles of a high school or college football game that takes place on the same weekend.

Peter O’Reilly, the NFL’s executive vice president of club business, international and league events, said the league typically wants to open the season with a game on the Thursday night of Labor Day week, which typically falls on the second weekend in September. However, this year, Labor Day falls on Sept. 2, so the league could hold a game on a Friday night since it was technically the first weekend of the month.

“The stars aligned this year,” O’Reilly said.

Next year, the NFL could also play a Friday game on the first weekend of play, as Labor Day falls on Sept. 1. O’Reilly said the league has not yet decided whether to play another Friday game in September 2025.

Still, given how the league has been looking for ways to infiltrate the schedule, it wouldn’t be surprising if we saw another Friday game next year. The NFL is calling the start of this year “the biggest kickoff weekend in history,” starting with Thursday’s Kansas City Chiefs-Baltimore Ravens game and ending with Monday’s New York Jets-San Francisco 49ers game.

The NFL will have another Friday game this year when the Las Vegas Raiders take on the Chiefs in Kansas City on Nov. 29, the day after Thanksgiving, which is commonly referred to as “Black Friday” and a popular shopping day. The league had its first “Black Friday” game last year, which, like this year’s, aired on Amazon Prime and started at 3 p.m., which may be an appeasement of the Sports Broadcasting Act, which required Friday games not to start after 6 p.m.

The NFL will have at least one Friday game in 2026 on Christmas Day, as part of the league’s deal with Netflix. Netflix will air two Christmas Day games this year. The streaming service will have at least one game on Christmas Day in 2025 (Thursday) and 2026 (Friday).

For the most part, the NFL will stay away from Friday nights this fall. However, as with the Eagles-Packers game in Brazil and the Black Friday and Christmas games, the league will look to expand its reach where possible and appropriate to increase revenue and give NFL fans another day to watch the nation’s most popular sport.