NFL Seeks Bids to Boost Ratings for Thursday Night Games

It is being reported that the NFL is shopping for a TV partner to share it's Thursday Night Football package, for the 2014 season only. The package would consist of as many as eight games.

The reason for the proposal to split the Thursday night package is to help the NFL Network boost the ratings of it's games. Getting a major broadcaster for the early season games could set a tone and a regularity of making Thursday night as big as Monday night or even Sunday night. Currently, the Thursday night games are the lowest rated of all games each week, averaging about eight million viewers for the 13 game schedule.

A formal proposal went out to the major cable and broadcast networks, but was not sent out to Google, which has recently expressed interest in streaming live games via the internet. It looks as if the NFL wants a high impact partner, not an emerging channel to partner with. We could see one of the broadcast networks take on the package, or a cable network with the power of an ESPN or TBS/TNT. Don't expect the CBS Sports Network or NBCSN to be chosen.

Networks have until the end of the week to submit bids to the NFL, which could fetch about $400 million. We could see an announcement as early as February.