The National Football League on Wednesday inked a monster TV rights deal that will move “Thursday Night Football” to Fox.
“TNF” will move to Fox beginning with the 2018 season, the NFL and the network announced Wednesday.
The Thursday telecasts had aired on CBS and NBC the past two seasons after the Tiffany Network had exclusive broadcast rights to the game in 2014-15 — the first two years the NFL offered the TV-rights package.
Terms of the Fox-NFL deal were not disclosed, but reports put the price of the five-year deal at about $3.3 billion — or roughly $60 million per game for the 11-game slate.
CBS and NBC paid roughly $45 million per game for 10 games.
“This agreement is the culmination of over 10 years of strategic growth around Thursday Night Football, a period during which this property has grown from a handful of late season games on NFL Network to a full season of games and one of the most popular shows on broadcast television with additional distribution via cable and digital channels,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement.
The deal, which kicks off with the 2018 season, includes 11 games between weeks four and 15 (excluding Thanksgiving night) to be broadcast on Fox. It will be simultaneously aired via the NFL Network and distributed in Spanish on Fox Deportes. The NFL Network will also exclusively televise seven games next season, with Fox producing the full slate of 18 games
Wednesday’s deal reaffirms Fox’s mission to become a leader in sports after it closes its deal with Walt Disney.
In December, Disney agreed to pay $52.4 billion for the bulk of Fox’s assets, leaving sports and news to the remaining Fox company.
“Football is in our blood at Fox and we understand that nothing beats the NFL when it comes to television that captures people’s attention,” said Peter Rice, president of Twenty-First Century Fox. “Our historic relationship with the NFL dates back to the earliest days of Fox, and we couldn’t be more excited to expand our deep and enduring partnership to include prime-time games on Thursday night.”
The NFL said the agreement marks the fifth media rights deal between it and Fox Sports, dating back to the agreement struck in December 1993 that helped solidify Fox as a major broadcast network.
Twenty-First Century Fox shares a common owner with News Corp., which owns The Post.