Al Michaels Could be Heading to Amazon for Thursday Night Football
According to Andrew Marchand of the New York Post it is looking more and more likely that legendary announcer Al Michaels will be calling Amazon home for the foreseeable future.
The Al Michaels/Amazon north of $30M number is over the length of the three year contract, not per season.
— Andrew Marchand (@AndrewMarchand) March 15, 2022
Still, an insane amount of money, but aggregators hold your fire.
Michaels who has broadcast games on NBC’s Sunday Night Football since 2006, would join the streaming platform as it tries to launch into streaming live NFL games by itself without sharing the platform with any of the major networks.
According to Marchand, Amazon is ready to lock up Michaels for three years at $10 million per year to cover all 16 games that begin in Week 2 of the regular season. Michaels would team up with Kirk Herbstreit for the first time ever. Herbstreit, who will remain at ESPN to call college football games is getting paid $33 million to add NFL Thursday nights to his schedule.
The teaming of Michaels and Herbstriet is just one of the many broadcast dominoes that are falling right now. Joe Buck and Troy Aikman left Fox Sports for lucrative deals at ESPN to take over Monday Night Football.
Beyond excited for the next chapter of my life. Here we go!!! @TroyAikman @espn pic.twitter.com/ggdlnziFQy
— Joe Buck (@Buck) March 16, 2022
Steve Levy remains at ESPN as its main Hockey play-by-play announcer.
This is the other side of it. I thank you for your friendship and grace with this Steve. Excited to join YOUR network. Please sit next to me in the cafeteria- I don’t know many people there yet https://t.co/hXAOh51hIL
— Joe Buck (@Buck) March 16, 2022
Meanwhile there is speculation that Buck will be replaced by Kevin Burkhardt in the football booth and Joe Davis in the World Series booth at Fox. Although nothing is official.