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If two of the five major college football dominoes kicked it out early in the spring of 2021, the NFL could soon have a chance to move some Sunday games to Saturday. If that happened then some Disney-owned networks would be interested in the product’s television.
Andrew Marchand of the New York Post reports that “ESPN / ABC are trying to land Saturday games.”
It’s unclear how many networks would add to their existing packages if the NFL were to make one or two or three windows on Saturday. Some networks may not be ready to write the check in turbulent financial times. Likewise, the NFL may not be ready to give FOX and CBS the kind of discounts needed to give away one or two or three Sunday games.
However, if college football stays the day, the NFL would be crazy not to come up with a way to hit the wide open Saturday windows: 1:00 pm ET, 4:30 pm ET, and 8:15 pm ET , the same windows the NFL uses when playing a trio of games on a Saturday in December 2019.
Whether the games are sold to a network or to a streaming service or the league sells the games directly to the consumer, with local games available at all times via free, over-the-air TV, moving games to Saturday would help to to get back the lost income of fans who do not attend games.
But the NFL would certainly be a complete and utter disappearance of college football from Saturday. The release of anti-trust broadcasts bans the NFL from television games on Friday and Saturday from Labor Day weekend to early December. If one of the conferences were to play this fall, it would be difficult or impossible for the NFL to fund an exception to the exemption, allowing Saturday games to be played, and television to be turned off.
However, the NFL may have a golden opportunity to take back some lost green this season. Wherever and however the games are offered to consumers, if there is no college football on Saturday, it would be an oversight if the NFL does not milk a cow that suddenly shows up in the barn.
