The National Football League is by far the most popular sport in the United States and building a bigger fan base internationally every year. After expanding to a 17-game season in 2021, the NFL is now looking at moving to an 18-game season.
The benefits for the league are obvious. At a time when Netflix is paying more than $100 million for a few Christmas Day games and the league’s broadcasting partners are each paying $1-2 billion annually for the rights to broadcast or stream games, adding another week to the schedule means more money.
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It’s also part of the reason why the league is considering a change to ownership rules that could funnel billions of dollars to the league with private equity firms, pension funds and sovereign wealth funds potentially allowed to become stakeholders in teams.
Adding a 17th game for all 32 teams would mean another week for the regular season, pushing back the Super Bowl to align with President’s Day weekend. If that happens, the league would go almost immediately from holding its biggest game of the year to around-the-clock media coverage of the NFL Combine.
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Recently, commissioner Roger Goodell reiterated his desire to expand to an 18-game season. It’s what team owners want and league officials believe a good compromise is eliminating preseason action in exchange for more regular-season games.
“We think that’s a good trade. Less preseason games and more regular-season games, most everybody would think that’s beneficial.”
Roger Goodell on expanding the regular season, reducing the number of preseason games
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Will the NFL add an 18th game?
However, in order for the league to add an 18th regular-season game to the schedule, it needs approval from the players’ union. While Goodell has suggested that shortening the preseason is a fair trade, it’s a non-starter for players.
On the Yahoo Sports’ Zero Blitz podcast, senior reporter Charles Robinson explained what players will want from the league in exchange for an 18th game beginning in 2030.
“It’s going to be about money, first and foremost. Multiple percentage points of that pie. I think they’re at 49, 49.5 percent of that right now. That’s gonna have to get up to like 52 percent. That’s gonna have to be another $600 million into the salary cap system in year one. They’re gonna have to lengthen the offseason, in terms of the time off that players get…Then there will be the byes, the two byes, and less preseason games.”
Charles Robinson on what NFL players want in exchange for approving an 18th game
As Robinson stated on the podcast, more and more teams aren’t even putting their starters on the field during the preseason so cutting down on those games does nothing for many around the league. Of those it does impact, reducing preseason games means fewer chances for players to prove themselves.
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Coaches will obviously be opposed to players getting even more time off during the offseason and owners will definitely fight against the players getting the larger half of revenue. However, the collective bargaining agreement requires the league to get approval from the NFLPA to expand the regular season. If that’s what owners want the most, players are going to use it to get a few billion dollars out of a regular-season expansion that could be worth even more money in the years to come.