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00:00How does it all get done?
00:03Scott, it's funny.
00:05I've participated in a lot of these through Zoom over the years.
00:08And the one thing that it's very clear to me of everything we discussed today,
00:13in fact, it was an hour call.
00:14It was actually longer than usual.
00:17You could not be like, you could be a team like the Dallas Cowboys, right?
00:20But if you've got national appeal, that matters to the league,
00:24that matters to the broadcast partners in a major way.
00:28So let's go to week one, right?
00:30So you've got the Eagles hosting the Cowboys on the Thursday night game.
00:34A lot of us thought it should have been Washington, right?
00:37Washington was that team that came out of nowhere.
00:39We'll have a little bit more on them a little bit later here.
00:42But no, they went.
00:43The partners wanted, actually NBC wanted, because they've got the game
00:47and it'll also be on Peacock, but NBC wanted this game.
00:50I mean, and so did the NFL explain it very clearly.
00:54The Cowboys have an unbelievable brand.
00:57You really look at it, Scott, right?
00:59You've got the Yankees and you've got the Cowboys, okay?
01:02Those are the two brands.
01:03You cannot go wrong with either one.
01:05And in the NFL, we've got the Cowboys.
01:07It's not like people think they're going to be 3-14.
01:10There's hope there that they'll bounce back.
01:12They're going to get Dak Prescott back after being 7-10 last season.
01:16And getting him back in the trade of George Pickens,
01:18they've got national appeal.
01:19National appeal means a lot to the broadcast partners.
01:22That's why not only them, but the Chiefs, despite getting blown out in the Super Bowl,
01:27have the most primetime games.
01:29So appeal matters and being a national team matters.
01:33The Eagles have five plus the Friday game on Amazon on Black Friday.
01:39So they're going to be a national TV a minimum of six times.
01:41And that matters.
01:43Obviously, they won the Super Bowl.
01:44So the thing that we keep hearing is, do you have national appeal no matter where your team is,
01:52kind of how they're thought of around the National Football League in terms of record?
01:56As long as you're competitive, you're going to be on a lot of national games.
01:59So that was one of the big things.
02:01And the other thing about flex scheduling, Scott, which I thought was fascinating.
02:04I hadn't even thought about this.
02:06But I think Mike North, who oversees scheduling, brought this up.
02:09Part of the flex scheduling is the ability to move a game that maybe is under the radar, right?
02:15You've got the Patriots and Mike Vrabel playing at the Titans.
02:18Now, both teams are not expected to be good.
02:21And this game is in week seven.
02:22That's along the lines of when flex scheduling starts.
02:25It starts as early as week five.
02:29Well, let's say one of the teams is good, right?
02:31Let's say it's the Patriots start off very, very well, better than we expected.
02:35And you've got Cam Ward, the first pick overall.
02:40That game would have appeal.
02:41If one of those teams is playing well, is over 500, that's a game that could be potentially flexed.
02:46So there are a lot of circumstances.
02:48It's not one size fits all.
02:50Sometimes games get flexed just because there's something going on with one of the teams.
02:55So explain to me how the Amazon Web Services is involved in this.
03:02Yeah, this is interesting.
03:03So one of the things I always laugh at is when they'll say, well, we use a lot of computers to do our scheduling.
03:08Well, in recent years, they've used AWS's Amazon Web Services to help schedule out different scenarios for the 272 regular season games.
03:18Now, a lot of things are taken into place with this.
03:21So every team's got to let them know what the conflicts are.
03:25Like if you're a team in like in Philly, right, you've got the Phillies who potentially could be playing in October, being that they could be a playoff team.
03:32So you have to have the conflicts.
03:34Concerts are taken into consideration.
03:37When they hockey or basketball teams, because, you know, Scott, in your travels, in some complexes, you've got the football team, the baseball team, the hockey team, and the basketball team all playing around the same area.
03:50And you've got to be careful with traffic and concerts.
03:53So that's taken into account.
03:55Rest, by the way, Scott, one of the things that I found interesting here is when they look at it, it's called the rest disparity.
04:03It's definitely a factor.
04:05It's not an overriding factor.
04:06But they do look at it because you don't want some teams getting an advantage over other teams in terms of rest.
04:12There's only so much you can do with it.
04:14And obviously, when you're a team that is playing on a Sunday night game, let's say you're an East Coast team that plays Sunday night in Los Angeles.
04:24You're not going to ask them to travel back.
04:26They're not going to get home until late Monday morning.
04:29You're not going to ask them to play on the road the next week.
04:32So they take a look at this when they put all the factors in their computer models.
04:37That stuff does matter.
04:38And by the way, still the most popular window, Scott, for scheduling is 425 Eastern.
04:44There's no question about that.
04:46That is a big deal to them.
04:48And this is an interesting situation, which I was not aware of.
04:52The NFL, and I would think this will be permanent.
04:56You know how the Lions get the 1230 game of Thanksgiving.
05:00They're moving it to 1 Eastern.
05:01Why?
05:01They think they can get around 10 million extra viewers just by moving it a half an hour due to travel.
05:07So they're convinced that they're going to get a ton of more viewers and obviously listeners or however you consume by doing that.
05:14We'll see if it works out.
05:15But that's something, just by moving it a half an hour, that they're going to do that.