ESPN’s NFL Wild Card game day still undecided, TGL schedule shows

Eagle-eyed sports media observers noticed a quirk in Tuesday's TGL schedule announcement that revealed part of ESPN's NFL playoff schedule is still up in the air.

As pointed out by the Sports TV News & Updates account on X, TGL, the tech-infused simulator golf league co-founded by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy's TMRW Sports, released its 2027 schedule on Tuesday, and it included a doubleheader that could be played on either Sunday, Jan. 17 or Monday, Jan. 18. The two matches were the only conditionally scheduled events on the TGL calendar, and it was quickly deduced that this was because ESPN will air an NFL Wild Card game on either that Sunday or Monday.

The Sunday possibility would mark a departure from the previous five years, when ESPN was guaranteed the Monday night Wild Card game, which gave the network synergy with its regular-season Monday Night Football package. That guarantee expired last season, and the NFL can now presumably schedule ESPN for any Saturday, Sunday, or Monday window during Wild Card weekend.

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Earlier this year, NFL media executive Hans Schroeder suggested the league hadn't yet committed to which broadcast partner would get the Monday night window.

"I'm sure we'll talk to Disney and I'm sure there'll be others interested," Schroeder told Sports Business Journal. "People see that window and the attractiveness of it."

ESPN has previously expressed interest in retaining the window, but the Monday primetime Wild Card game is viewed as one of the more attractive Wild Card windows, perhaps behind only the Sunday late-afternoon and Sunday primetime windows in terms of viewership potential.

During the 2020-21 season, before its five-year guarantee for the Monday Wild Card slot kicked in, ESPN aired a Sunday afternoon Wild Card game. The year before that, ESPN aired a Wild Card game in one of the Saturday windows.

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The Wild Card schedule is yet another carrot the NFL can dangle over its broadcast partners to reward good behavior. It changes year to year, and some windows and games are clearly better than others. So far, it looks like ESPN is preparing for any outcome.

The post ESPN's NFL Wild Card game day still undecided, TGL schedule shows appeared first on Awful Announcing.