There are only 272 games in the NFL regular-season schedule. Amid the roughly one quadrillion potential ways of arranging them, however, the league has landed on a 2025 slate designed to make each one of those games as unique and special as possible.
As planned for weeks, the NFL released its full 2025 schedule Wednesday night, unveiling a slate that places more games than ever in exclusive broadcast windows. Among the moves to break more contests into individual slots beyond the existing windows on Sunday, Monday, and Thursday nights:
- A larger-than-ever international schedule of seven games, led by the Chiefs playing the Chargers in Brazil on Sept. 5 on YouTube and YouTube TV, as reported last week by Front Office Sports.
- A heightened schedule of Saturday games in late December and early January, including an exclusive Fox doubleheader on Dec. 20, and another twin bill on ESPN and ABC on Jan. 3, after the conclusion of the college football regular season. Some of those games, however, will compete for viewers with the expanded College Football Playoff.
- A streaming-focused Christmas tripleheader involving both Netflix and Amazon.
The heightened separation of games is happening as the NFL saw regular-season ratings fall 2% last year and is looking to have that not become a trend. NFL games, however, are also set to be a focal point of an expanded measurement methodology recently introduced by Nielsen, as they are top-rated programming in all of U.S. television.
The full drop of the schedule followed three days of pre-release announcements by Amazon, CBS, ESPN, Fox, and NBC, in addition to Netflix.
The Power of the Kingdom
As was the case last year, the NFL’s leaning heavily into the widespread appeal of the Chiefs, even as they were trounced by the Eagles in Super Bowl LIX.
As the league’s top viewership draw, Kansas City will play internationally in the season’s first week, on both Thanksgiving and Christmas, and also in five other standalone slots. Just four of the team’s 17 games start at 1 p.m. ET.
More Schedule Highlights
Not surprisingly, each of the NFL’s domestic rights holders touted the appeal of their respective schedules. Amazon will again have all 14 of the 2024 season’s playoff participants for its Thursday Night Football schedule, as well as 10 divisional matchups. CBS Sports will air up to nine Chiefs games, including a massive Nov. 2 matchup against the Bills, and up to nine for Buffalo and 11 for the Steelers. NBC Sports has eight Sunday Night Football games involving matchups of postseason participants last season. ESPN will have 25 total games, including 11 in the first seven weeks.
Fox will get the coveted Super Bowl LIX rematch between the Eagles and Chiefs in Week 2.
“The schedule is deep and well balanced, and something we see providing additional momentum as we look to build further audience,” Amazon Prime Video head of sports programming Jeff Kaiser tells FOS. “The big draw of divisional games provides a lot of upside, particularly late in the season.”
Social Media Frenzy
The Super Bowl for NFL players arrives in February, but for each team’s social media staff, that tentpole arrives on the day of the schedule release. This year was no exception as each of them sought to showcase their upcoming games.
Inventive displays of the schedule were developed by teams such as the Chargers, Titans, Ravens, Cardinals, and Falcons.
