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NFL A new Thanksgiving Eve game could be worth tens of millions of dollars to the league. Steph Chambers / Getty Images The NFL is exploring adding a Thanksgiving Eve game to its football feast that already includes the traditional Thursday afternoon doubleheader and a Black Friday game, a league spokesman confirmed. That new game could join the schedule as early as the 2026 season. By far the most popular programming on TV, the NFL has a slate of four games it is selling this offseason. The idea of putting a game on a Wednesday could be enticing to a streamer or a network and, for the league, worth tens of millions of dollars. Advertisement Netflix pays the NFL $75 million per game for its Christmas Day doubleheaders. The streamer is in the final year of its three-year agreement. ESPN first reported that the NFL is looking into the idea of the Wednesday game. A source briefed on the potential plans told The Athletic that if the league does play on this day, the two teams will likely be coming off of byes. The NFL has four games to sell this season as part of its deal with ESPN, which gave the league a 10 percent equity stake in the network. As part of the agreement that included NFL Network shifting to ESPN, the league took back four games. Prime Video already has the Black Friday game, while Fox, CBS and NBC are the Thanksgiving platforms. You Tube, which ran its first NFL game last year, appears to be the likeliest destination for the new four-game package, Sports Business Journal reported. Christian Oestlien, You Tube’s vice president of subscriptions, recently told The Athletic that, “We want You Tube to be a core part of their media distribution. ” You Tube is already the home of NFL Sunday Ticket, which offers fans access to out-of-market games. It had its first live exclusive stream of a game last year when the Kansas City Chiefs faced the Los Angeles Chargers from Brazil. The league is in the midst of renegotiating its 11-year, $110-plus billion TV contracts with CBS, NBC, Fox, ESPN and Prime Video. The agreements are only three seasons old, but the NFL has opt-outs at the end of the decade that it is using to leverage even greater payments. “Every offseason we look for new opportunities to best serve our fans in the schedule-making process, ” an NFL spokesperson said. “As commissioner Goodell has said, Thanksgiving and NFL football have become synonymous, and given the continued growth of fan interest around our games on Thanksgiving and Black Friday, looking for additional opportunities tied to this special holiday is exciting for us to explore. ” Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Play today's puzzle Andrew Marchand is a Sr. Sports Media Columnist for The Athletic. He previously worked for the New York Post and ESPN, where he predominantly covered sports media and baseball. In 2024, he won the Associated Press Sports Editors' top national award for beat writing for his coverage of sports media. Marchand also has his own twice-weekly sports media podcast available at Andrew Marchand. com.