Ian Eagle to Amazon’s Thursday Night Football is a more complicated succession plan than it appears.
Appearing on Puck’s The Varsity podcast with John Ourand, The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand said that while Prime Video has its sights set on Eagle as the eventual replacement for Al Michaels, CBS has no interest in letting him walk, pointing to Eagle’s long tenure at the network and his relationship with CBS Sports head David Berson.
“If you play out the Al Michaels situation for Amazon, they have their sights set on Ian Eagle, but CBS wants to keep Ian Eagle. He’s been there a long time. There’s a loyalty for Ian Eagle, I think, with CBS. Great relationship with [David] Berson, I believe,” Marchand said. “What’s their Plan B? I mean, there are other people, but they’re under contract. It’s not as simple as you think if you’re Amazon Prime Video if Al Michaels were to retire and you don’t get Ian Eagle. There’s only so many people you know who could do it.”
Eagle has called NFL games for CBS since 1998, and in 2024 he succeeded Jim Nantz as the network’s lead voice for the Final Four alongside Bill Raftery and Grant Hill. This season, he occupies CBS’s No. 2 NFL booth opposite Ross Tucker following the network’s reshuffle in the wake of Tony Romo’s leave, marking his third booth partner in as many years after stints with Charles Davis and J.J. Watt.
Amazon, however, already has a working relationship with Eagle. As far back as May 2024, Prime Video was reported to view Eagle as a potential Michaels successor while it assembled talent for its incoming NBA package, and that fall, Ryan Glasspiegel, then of the New York Post, reported Eagle was in serious talks to join the streamer’s NBA coverage. Eagle ultimately signed on and significantly scaled back his Brooklyn Nets duties on YES Network to call roughly 50 games for Prime Video, and he and Stan Van Gundy served as the streamer’s top booth for the Play-In Tournament and first two rounds of the NBA Playoffs this spring.
Michaels, meanwhile, has been operating on borrowed time contractually. The 81-year-old signed a three-year deal to become the voice of TNF when the package moved to Prime Video in 2022, returned on a one-year deal for 2025, and confirmed to Sports Business Journal’s Richard Deitsch in January that he would be back for 2026, saying at the time he would keep going as long as he could perform at a level that satisfied him. Kirk Herbstreit’s three-year contract with Prime Video also expires after this season, as does his College GameDay deal.
Asked about his future at CBS Media Day last month, Eagle told Awful Announcing he had stopped trying to predict where his career would go next.
“I think what I’ve learned is if you expect it to go a certain way, you’re probably barking up the wrong tree,” Eagle said. “So I’ve probably been a bit more of in the moment at this stage of my career, and we’ll see where the road takes me.”
Marchand’s question about a Plan B is where Amazon’s options narrow. Buck, whom Amazon also considered when it first staffed TNF in 2021, is now locked in at ESPN through the 2031 Super Bowl, with Marchand also reporting that ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro wants Buck on the call should the network land World Series rights in 2029. Kevin Harlan, the other name frequently floated, is in the same position as Eagle, calling NBA games for Prime Video while remaining under contract with CBS for the NFL. That would leave Amazon with few established alternatives who aren’t already spoken for elsewhere.
Whether Amazon has to test CBS’s resolve depends first on Michaels, who has not said whether 2026 will be his final season.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.