NFL insider reveals what players want from the league for an 18-game season.
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.
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.
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.
