Black Friday game sees 41-percent increase over 2023

The NFL’s Black Friday experiment is finding its footing.

This year’s Raiders-Chiefs game outpaced the 2023 Dolphins-Jets day-after-Thanksgiving game by 41 percent, according to Prime Video.

The audience averaged 13.51 million viewers. Last year, Dolphins-Jets averaged 9.61 million.

Friday afternoon isn’t an ideal time for football viewing. But nothing draws a massive live audience together like NFL games.

The game begins at 3:00 p.m. ET. That’s a product of the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, which gave the NFL an antitrust exemption for the sale of TV rights in exchange for an agreement not to televise games after 6:00 p.m. ET on Friday or at any time on Saturdays from the second weekend of September through the second weekend of December.

Given the current political climate, the next play for the NFL could be to adjust or to eliminate the Friday-Saturday restriction, opening the door for the cramming of more cheese into the crust of the pigskin pizza.

Regardless, Black Friday football has shown after two years that it will become part of the NFL’s new Thanksgiving tradition.