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NFL Schedule Release Is a Multiday Marketing Marathon
- Story by
- NFL Schedule Release Is a Multiday Marketing Marathon
The NFL turned a press release into a celebration. Then it kept going.
2025's full slate of games will be unveiled at 8 p.m. ET Wednesday across the NFL's digital and TV channels. But several marquee matchups have already been tipped by seven eager TV partners and the league itself, which dropped its international schedule Tuesday. Come prime time, team schedule announcement videos crafted over the course of months will likely grab even more spotlight.
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Then comes the rush to buy tickets. Less than half of the teams put tickets on sale immediately a decade ago. Now they all do, with sales rising 150% around schedule release between 2019 and 2022 and prices jumping close to 10% year-over-year these days.
Schedule release has become an Olympics for team creatives, the Super Bowl for ticket sellers, and Christmas Day around the league, all rolled into one.
Partner broadcasters are typically given license to hype 1-2 games coming to their networks ahead of the release, and this year's batch of leaks has demonstrated the perceived drawing power of the reigning champion Philadelphia Eagles.
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The Eagles will start their title defense with a season kickoff game against the Cowboys on Sept. 4, with later dates against the Commanders, Bears and Packers announced by Fox, Amazon Prime Video and ESPN, respectively.
Philadelphia is not among the teams traveling internationally this year. The NFL shared most of the specifics for its record-sized slate of seven abroad contests on Tuesday, including back-to-back games for the Minnesota Vikings in Dublin and London. The AFC champion Kansas City Chiefs were absent from the announced list of globetrotters, though reports indicate they will fill the unannounced spot opposite the Los Angeles Chargers in Brazil during the opening week of the campaign.
That matchup will be formally announced at YouTube's annual pitch to advertisers Wednesday afternoon. Both ESPN and Fox unveiled their games as they launched new streaming services. Having an exclusive NFL game to tout is great, but getting to announce what that game will be live on stage is evidently even better.
Once the league-wide schedule is announced, team-specific release videos on social media will commandeer the conversation. These days, the creative outputs feature months of prep time, advanced production values and frequent celebrity cameos. Both the Patriots and Chargers have recently received recognition from The Shortys social media and digital awards. Several other teams have seen their most popular social posts of all time released alongside their schedule.
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Some teams boost their schedule release push with paid advertisements on top of any viral recognition they receive. "We're trying to get [teams] to focus on specific audiences at the on-sale moment that you want to really engage," live event marketing platform FanIQ founder Jesse Lawrence said.
The release videos work as branding opportunities for each franchise—as well as an extra form of competition between rivals—but they also serve as cross-promotion, SeatGeek director of category marketing Chris Leyden said. A great Titans video could remind a Browns fan that their schedule is out too, and that now might be the time to buy tickets.
Leyden said SeatGeek usually sees a spike in demand starting right around the time of release and continuing through the night. "You sort of go from like zero to 60, very quickly," he said. "Certainly no other sports schedule release is remotely at this size."
Fans going shopping Wednesday will encounter new all-in pricing disclosures across ticket marketplaces, largely the result of anti-junk fee policies approved by the Federal Trade Commission in December. As of Monday, businesses selling live-event passes (as well as short-term lodging) now must show total costs upfront. While prices might appear higher as a result, advocates argue the change benefits consumers, even if it doesn't decrease the fees they are still responsible for.
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The changes represent one more cause for celebration.
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