This September 6th will go down in history for the NFL, as the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers will play the first game in Brazil and in South America, another milestone in the global expansion model set by Commissioner Roger Goodell. Additionally, the match at the Arena Corinthians in Sao Paulo will have the particularity of being played on a Friday, a day that rarely appears on the schedule.
The official NFL days are Thursday, mostly Sunday, and on Monday Night, but Fridays and Saturdays are almost banned for programming due to an old law in the United States.
What prevents the NFL from playing on Fridays?
Since the NFL merged with the American Football League (AFL) in the late 1960s and began the "Super Bowl era," only 12 games have been played on Fridays, most of them on Christmas.
The reason has to do with the Sports Broadcasting Act, signed 60 years ago, which prohibits professional leagues like the NFL from broadcasting games on Fridays and Saturdays within a 75-mile radius of a high school or college game. The goal is to protect these competitions, so that communities can attend these games and not stay at home to watch a professional football match.
Technically, the NFL could schedule games these days, but they couldn't broadcast them since practically every corner of the United States has a high school game on Friday nights and all day Saturday there are college football matchups at a national level.
The restriction applies from the second Friday of September until the second Saturday of December, as that is when high school and college competitions last until. This allowed the NFL to schedule Eagles vs Packers for Friday, September 6, and Chiefs vs Raiders for Black Friday on November 29, as it is a holiday for Thanksgiving Day.