NFL likely will peel more and more games away for "one-off" deals

For years, the NFL had a handful of broadcast partners that exclusively televised all games. A new trend has begun, and it likely will continue. And expand.

It’s the exclusive “one-off” arrangement, with a game being taken away from a traditional partner (usually, CBS or Fox) and dropped into a different window.

It started a decade ago, with Yahoo! streaming a Sunday game between the Bills and Jaguars from London in 2015. Two years later, a Ravens-Jaguars game in London was streamed by Yahoo!

The dynamic returned in a big way last year, when non-partner Netflix (to the chagrin of existing partner Amazon) got the two Christmas games that were played on Wednesday, December 25. This year, the Friday night game in Brazil has landed with YouTube, which distributes Sunday Ticket but has no broadcast deal.

Julia Alexander of Puck recently noted that she’s watching this trend, based on one undeniable truth: "[T]he NFL can do what it wants, and usually does.”

Indeed it can, and indeed it does. When it comes to NFL broadcast rights, the customer is never right. Given the limited supply, the league can dictate terms — and indiscriminately yank games away from long standing partners and hand them to a company with which the league has little or no history.

The league will keep doing it. Especially if/when (when) the regular-season expands to 18 games. And when (not if) the league pulls the plug on the existing broadcast deals four years earlier, putting everything up for bid after 2029.

Through it all, the league will find more ways to carve out standalone games, the broadcasting equivalent of coming up with more ways to cram cheese into a pizza. That Week 1 Friday night game, for example, which works only when the first Friday of the season coincides with the first Friday in September, will become — we believe — a 3:00 p.m. ET Friday kickoff in the years when Week 1 coincides with the second Friday in September.

There’s also the first Saturday of September, which like the first Friday night is fair game under the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961. Given that Friday nights become fair game again as of the second Friday in December, games could land there, too.

Whenever the league can televise one game and one game alone, millions gather. Frankly, it’s amazing that Tuesday night and Wednesday night have not already become a regular staple for NFL scheduling.

It’s just a matter of time for further stuffing of the stuffed crust. Especially since it allows the NFL to do business with anyone who wants to broadcast NFL games, while still keeping all of them tiptoeing on football-shaped eggshells.