With his contract set to expire after the season, there had been some speculation that the 2024 campaign would be Al Michaels’ last with Amazon Prime.
It appears, however, that won’t be the case, with The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand reporting that the broadcasting legend will return to the Thursday Night Football booth on a year-by-year basis beginning in 2025.
The 2024 NFL season has marked Michaels’ third year calling games in the Amazon Prime booth alongside analyst Kirk Herbstreit. While he had previously been a polarizing presence on TNF as he often appeared disinterested and/or dissatisfied with the product on the field, that hasn’t been the case this year as the 80-year-old has seemingly been reenergized by a better slate of matchups.
Details of Michaels’ new agreement remain unclear. His original three-year deal with Amazon reportedly paid him around $15 million per year.
Discussing his future with The New York Post earlier this year, Michaels said he’ll continue to call games as long as he can meet his own expectations in the broadcast booth.
“I suspect that sometime during the year I’ll have a better feeling of what it’s like,” Michaels said in September. “But my feeling is, if I can live up to the standard I expect from myself, then I’ll want to continue. If I can’t, then I’ll have to think about it another way. I don’t want to go out, as Howard Cosell used to say, ‘a shadow of your former self.’”
News of Michaels’ return to the Prime Video booth comes nearly one year to the day that Marchand first reported that the Arizona State alum had been left out of NBC’s NFL playoff plans. The news reportedly blindsided Michaels, who had a deal in place to call select playoff games with the network that moved on from him in favor of Mike Tirico following his 15-year stint as the voice of NBC’s Sunday Night Football and multiple Super Bowls.
Next month, Michaels will return to the NFL postseason, as he and Herbstreit are set to call Amazon Prime’s broadcast of a Wild Card Round game. It remains to be seen how many playoff games are in his future as he enters his new agreement with the streamer.
About Ben Axelrod
Ben Axelrod is a veteran of the sports media landscape, having most recently worked for NBC's Cleveland affiliate, WKYC. Prior to his time in Cleveland, he covered Ohio State football and the Big Ten for outlets including Cox Media Group, Bleacher Report, Scout and Rivals.