In a rare instance of having four national windows this Sunday, the NFL will provide Americans with four games at 9:30 a.m. ET, 1 p.m. or 4:05 p.m., 4:25 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. As Detroit and Atlanta prepare to play the NFL’s second game in London this season, we have the opportunity to eat all three meals and have football be our companion throughout the day.
Before you scratch your head wondering what is up with the 9:30 a.m. ET start, all you have to know is that this is an NFL experiment to determine if it will draw ratings especially in the Eastern and Central time zones. As Sports Illustrated’s Peter King writes in MMQB:
“Not only is the NFL watching closely, but FOX and CBS are keeping their eyes on the game. Sunday morning is a potential fourth window that day, and you can be sure that if viewers flock to this game, at least one game a year from London will start at this insane hour. (Worth mentioning that our Left Coast friends don’t think it’s insane; those in the Pacific time zone see games at 10 a.m. all season.) But the NFL is eyeing the massive TV audience east of the Mississippi—about 76 percent of all televisions in the United States are in the Eastern and Central time zones—to see if it has an appetite for an early game.”
This isn’t the first time we’ve had four game windows. Last year, the San Diego-Oakland game was shifted to an 11:35 p.m. ET start due to the Oakland A’s being in the MLB playoffs, but the game didn’t draw well in the ratings.
The nine previous NFL regular season games in London have been played at 6 p.m. UK time to coincide with the early 1 p.m. ET window, but in this case, it gets its own timeslot at 1:30 p.m. locally.
If successful, the 9:30 a.m. game could give the NFL an additional window plus an opportunity for CBS and Fox to have an additional doubleheader per season. In this case, both Fox and CBS have a doubleheader. Fox at 9:30 and 1/4:05, CBS at 1 and 4:25 p.m.
It’s also uncharted territory for the Sunday morning pregame shows which will have to air opposite a game. Fox will have an early edition of its Fox NFL Sunday at 9 a.m. leading into Detroit-Atlanta from London (which will be called by Thom Brennaman, Troy Aikman and Charissa Thompson). It will also air another edition of Fox NFL Sunday at the conclusion of the game and lead into the 1 p.m. window.
CBS, CBS Sports Network, ESPN and NFL Network all will have to deal with a game in-progress and most likely smaller audiences. Sports Business Daily reports both ESPN and NFL Network plan to produce a halftime show during Sunday NFL Countdown and NFL GameDay Morning respectively as well as a postgame program once Lions-Falcons ends.
If the ratings for the morning game are anywhere close to decent or better, you can rest assured that the NFL will schedule more London games at 9:30 a.m. and possibly schedule a UK-based team’s games for that timeslot when the league decides to firmly set a base there.
So the NFL will be studying the ratings for the “Breakfast at Wembley Stadium” game and if the numbers are good, we could be seeing some four game windows in 2015 and beyond.
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