NEW YORK — Thursday Night Football is expanding. Both CBS and NBC will broadcast the NFL’s Thursday night match ups, with each televising five games, the league announced on Monday. The Thursday Night Football package will grow to 10 games in 2016 and 2017 from eight games in 2014 and 2015.
The NFL Network will continue to simulcast the games being aired on CBS and NBC.
CBS will broadcast the first half of the scheduled games and NBC will televise the second half.
CBS and NBC will pay a total of roughly $450 million in fees for the broadcast game schedule, a person with direct knowledge of the deal said. Since each network will get five games, the cost comes out to about $45 million per Thursday night telecast.
The broadcasters offset these steep licensing fees through ads, TV subscriber fees and other sources of revenue.
The NFL isn’t finished extracting revenue from Thursday nights. The league is going to sell streaming rights to the games separately, rather than including them in the deal with CBS and NBC.
“The NFL is in active discussions with prospective digital partners for OTT [digital] streaming rights,” the league said. “A deal announcement is expected in the near future.”
Yahoo, YouTube, Amazon, and Facebook are some of the logical possibilities for a streaming partnership. The NFL worked with Yahoo to stream one game last fall.
“We are continuing to make Thursday Night Football bigger and better,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement.
Goodell added that the league is looking “forward to expanding with a digital partner for what will be a unique tri-cast on broadcast, cable, and digital platforms.”
