A mixture of seasonal rites will occur on Sunday afternoon, a collision which is not quite a disturbance in the force but shocking, however.
In the Arizona desert, Pitcheurs and sensors of Chicago Cubs Will lace their tips and take the fields in Mesa for their first 2025 season training.
A few hours later, under the roof in dome of New Orleans SuperdomeThe heads of Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City will start Super Bowl 59By finishing the 2024 season with all the glitter and gorged that result from it associated with the greatest secular holidays in the United States.
And for the second consecutive year, the NFL season will bleed in the symbolic start of the next baseball season, a quirk that will probably become the norm while big football is extending its footprint and other leagues aim to follow.
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Like animals wandering beyond their natural habitats, the main professional sports seasons are not heard more and more to their traditional calendars.
The trend will only deepen: in 2027, the Super Bowl will be played on Valentine’s Day, by coincidence, the commissioner of the same year exceed $ 25 billion in annual income. This objective should be accelerated by the addition of an 18th Regular season match, which will require modifying the collective agreement of the League, while also expanding the tart to share income for owners and players.
Unless adjusting the improbable calendar, an 18th The game would push the NFL season closer to March than January and align with the utopian vision of the League for World Domination.
“The NFL is not concerned about becoming greater. The goal of the NFL has always been that people talk about its league and its matches around the calendar, “said Dennis Deninger, professor emeritus in Syracuse, former ESPN producer and author of” The Football Game that changed America ” .
“When you look at the draft of the NFL which grows in the spring, the training camps in the middle of the summer, it took over the sports calendar.”
It is a content drift almost half a century in preparation.
Trends to Mars
In 1977, the NFL played its last season of 14 games, through an imprint that seems unrecognizable to the modern eye.
The first Sunday of the matches fell on September 18 – and the Super Bowl was always completed before January 15. A year later, the 16 game calendar made its debut, with a start on Sunday of September 3 and a Super Bowl on January 21.
Over the next two decades, a handful of factors dictated the start and end of the NFL season.
In 1990, a week of leave was added, pushing the Super Bowl until January 27 and then on January 31 two years later. In 1993, an unhappy double bye calendar made an 18 -week regular season, but with a start to the day before work, the season has always ended on January 30.
It was only during attacks on September 11 in 2001, which canceled the second season of the week, that the Super Bowl slipped in February, but with only a week between the conference championships and the big match, He returned to January the following season.
However, the game has landed in February of each year since February 1, 2004, and for most years, the NFL adopted a “all of the above” approach:
A week of week 1 after work, to optimize television notes. Two weeks between the conference title games and the Super Bowl, to maximize accumulation. And, since 2021, a regular season of 17 games.
Not only does this keep the eyeballs on the ground – and the flat screen – from September to mid -February, but it also reduces any notion of dead time.
The NFL combination begins just two weeks after the end of the Super Bowl. The new year of championship is completely launched by mid-March. And the draft of the NFL – clearly the largest unrevoying sporting event in the calendar – lands at the end of April, with bottomless speculation in perspective.
Until then, the start of the training camp at the end of July is almost in sight.
“The NFL season comes to life, it seems that, 365 days a year now,” said Dean Corington, director of marketing at Anheuser-Busch.
Roughly.
NBA thought Christmas was “our day”
DENINGER cites a study which indicates that the NFL conducts all the sports leagues in the interest of fans 11 over 12 months of the year, with June the only period during which it is prevailing on MLB.
Admittedly, fans’ commitment is not a zero -sum game, highlighted by television contracts of several billion dollars including the MLB, the NBA football and Power Four conferences, and the stratospheric growth of athletics Female, in particular basketball, at the college and professional level.
However, the main display slots are over, and there is not much to keep the NFL married on Sunday.
LeBron James put this in Christmas Day.
It was for a long time the domain of the NBA, which was the subject of the occasion of a game or two with unique name superstars (Shaq and Kobe, Michael and the Bulls) in a quintuple pointer all day , the best to satisfy its owners of national rights.
With his regular season starting in the middle of the World Series and the NFL Stretch Drive, Christmas has become a de facto opening day for the NBA. Until this year.
While Christmas fell on football days such as Saturday, Sunday or the previous Monday, this year’s vacation would be celebrated on Wednesday.
No worries: the NFL simply moved a pair of matches to the previous Saturday, brought these four teams back to three days of rest and organized a double vacation head.
Oh, and attracted Beyoncé to her hometown of Houston for a Cowboy Cowboy Carter Halftime Show.
A few hours later, James led the Los Angeles Lakers to victory over the Golden State Warriors – LeBron against Steph, taking into account the theme of the holiday superstar – and then deplored what he could feel decreased thanks Double-head of the NFL.
“I love the NFL,” said James in an post-match interview, “I love the NFL. But Christmas is our day.
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A few days later, James’ firm pride gave way to pragmatism.
The DoubleHerader de Football attracted 65 million viewers to Netflix, who was in streaming in the NFL. The second match with the Ravens and the Texans culminated in more than 27 million viewers.
Lakers-Warriors? He reached an average of 7.7 million viewers and culminated at 8.3 million. In the Tour des Post-Evaluations, the NBA could boast that it was the most watched regular season match since 2019 and its most watched Christmas list in five years.
However, it is clear that a holiday feaster has released a fairly massive piece of ham.
“According to an audience (point of view), you all kicked (explanive),” said James on the Podcast of Travis and Jason Kelce a few weeks later. “But when you go out there, you have your little brother and he can be beaten once. You said to yourself: ‘Hey, we didn’t lose this fight. We stay here.
“This is what I felt. I had to get up. I had to defend the NBA. »»
“Survival of the most apt”
It is a tango that almost all sports do.
University football hoped for more exclusivity in the third Saturday in December for the first round of its playoffs; The NFL yield A window as a prime time but has always faced a double head against a CFP tripleheader – and easily prevailed in the dimensions.
Meanwhile, semi-finals have taken place A Thursday and a Friday To dodge the NFL. And the championship match took place on Monday 20 January, assuming the Monday evening football slit which was extended for a week because of – wait for it – the extended weekend of the NFL.
It is not optimal to stage a match for the title so late in the year that other university teams are already leading waste in anticipation of next season – or by storing in the transfer portal. But dodging the giant is something that each sport has to do – that’s why the MLB World Series games are More disputed on Sunday evening.
“This is the survival of the most fit,” says Deninger. “And if the NFL sees a good reason to be one day during their calendar, they will continue this. .
However, it becomes quite cramped in the corners. An 18th The regular season match could push the Super Bowl to the third week of February – the guarantee with the weekend of the presidents of the presidents and the creation of vacation for many fans the day after the Super Bowl.
This would also be in conflict with the NBA star match, once again forcing a league to advance a jewelry event in front or back on the calendar.
And that’s fine.
Blowing eyes on the enlargement of international games at 16 per year and keeping inherited and emerging distribution partners well fed, the dreams of income from Goodell are closer.
Other leagues have similar dreams to extend to the globe and collect more audiences.
The Cubs report on Sunday because they will open the early season, with mid-March games in Japan opposing their own Asian stars such as Seiya Suzuki and Shota Imanaga against the trio of dodgers of Shohei OhtaniYoshinobu Yamamoto and Rōki sasaki.
Years no longer become. But the calendar only becomes more congested, so make room for strange bed companions – such as launchers and reporting sensors, and a presentation of the Lombardi trophy, all in a day.
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