Hey, what stations the game on? That’s what you can hear said in numerous households throughout the country when they’re trying to tune into a sporting event. Especially if they have cable in which they’re constantly switching stations to different channels. In the NFL there have been quite a bit of transitions going on in the past few years. Just when people are getting use to the new realignment, the NFL will now also switch up the major broadcasts that we’re so use to.

The NFL is one of the most marketable lanes and they truly do capitalize on that when there is a contract up for grabs. ABC, who has televised Monday Night Football for 35 years will suddenly be left in the dust as far as NFL coverage goes. The company has seen ratings go down, and the NFL feels that it is better suited for cable. After all, ESPN and ABC are a joint venture so it isn’t like ABC is completely out of the fold.

ESPN will take over the Monday Night games in 2006, so that leaves ABC with one more great grand finale to go. For ESPN it only allows the network to keep expanding, which seems to be growing by the year new clever ideas related to sports. ESPN, also relinquished their rights to Sunday night games which has had its up and downs but has been an overall success.

NBC will take over in that area, and will broadcast NFL games for the first time since 1999. If that game is going to succeed, there will need to be better matchups presented. A lot of times, especially last year there were countless bad matchups that devoted no interest to NFL fans. After a long day of watching football, and tallying their fantasy sports teams, no one wants to sit around watching a boring Sunday night game. With all of the exciting prime time television shows, those boring Sunday night games turn into commercial break check ins.

The NFL has really changed rapidly over the last five years, and even has a scheduled Sunday Night game this year with the Arizona Cardinals and San Francisco 49ers competing in Mexico. The globalization and market value of the NFL continues to soar, and networks are catching on. By signing long term tv contracts it allows them to side step inflation taxation prices that would have hiked up dramatically, if it were two to three more years down the road.