The 2024 NFL season kicks off on Thursday night, but fans won’t have to wait until Sunday to watch more matchups. The NFL will feature another game on Friday night between the Green Bay Packers and the Philadelphia Eagles.
The game will be played in Sao Paulo, Brazil. It’s the NFL’s first game in Brazil and South America as a whole.
However, the game also marks another rarity in the NFL: a game being played on a Friday. This is just the third time since 2010 in which the league scheduled a Friday game. Why is that? Here’s everything you need to know about this Friday’s matchup.
The NFL broadcasting a Friday game early in the season is virtually unheard of, and that’s because of the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961. The NFL cannot host Friday (or Saturday) games from the second weekend of September until after the second weekend in December. This year, the NFL got lucky by Labor Day falling on Monday, Sept. 2, meaning the upcoming weekend wouldn’t be considered the second weekend in September.
The NFL decided to take advantage of this calendar year to host a Friday game—one that’s being played outside of the country.
The NFL has played games on Fridays only 12 times before the 2024 season. Funny enough, the first Friday game took place during the NFL’s first post-merger 1970 season in Week 1. This year’s Week 1 Friday game marks the first time in 54 years the league has scheduled such a game.
From there, the NFL took a break from hosting Friday games until they chose to play one each year from 1983 to ’86.
In 2005, there was an exception to the schedule when Hurricane Wilma caused a Miami Dolphins game to be rescheduled for a Friday.
Other than these few planned instances, the rest of the Friday games only occurred when a holiday fell on a Friday—like Christmas Eve, Christmas Day or New Year’s Eve.
Last year marked the first Black Friday game played on the day after Thanksgiving. This year will continue this new tradition when the Las Vegas Raiders play the Kansas City Chiefs on Friday, Nov. 29. The NFL is allowed to host a Black Friday game as long as the majority of the game is over by 6 p.m. ET, according to the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961.
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