The NFL’s most famous play-by-play voice wants to call games for the 2025 season.
During an interview with the “Sports Media Podcast” this week, longtime NFL voice Al Michaels said he plans to be in the broadcast booth next year calling NFL games for Amazon Prime Video. He also said Amazon management is “in favor” of his return, confirming a report from The Athletic in December about his status. It would be his 39th season calling an NFL prime-time package.
“I am leaning very heavily in that direction, yes,” Michaels said when asked about returning, given that his current contract expires at the end of the NFL season. “I want to make sure, No. 1, I’m healthy enough, which I am right now. I want to make sure I still have the passion for it, and I know I do. Those two factors are key.
“I also love the people I’m working with. Not only Kirk (Herbstreit) and Kaylee Hartung, who I work with in the game presentation, but I love our pregame people. I love Andrew Whitworth, Tony Gonzalez, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Charissa Thompson — a fantastic host. I love being with all those people. We have fun. Away from on-air we have a lot of laughs, a lot of joy.
“I still get excited walking into a stadium. I still love to do what I do. So, why walk away?”
Asked whether Amazon management shares his enthusiasm for returning, Michaels said it does.
“Management is in favor of it, and they have been great, top to bottom,” Michaels said. “(Amazon CEO) Andy Jassy is a huge sports fan. I think he actually owns a small piece (he is a minority owner) of the Seattle Kraken hockey team. His father grew up as a New York Rangers fan in my era. When you have that support from the top of the top, which Andy is, that makes it so much better for everybody else, and it works its way all the way down through the show, and we can all feel it.”
Alongside Herbstreit and Hartung, Michaels will call the Pittsburgh Steelers–Baltimore Ravens wild-card playoff game from Baltimore this Saturday (8 p.m. ET kickoff), Amazon Prime Video’s first-ever NFL playoff game.
Last year, Peacock had an exclusive wild-card game that drew in 23 million viewers and made it the most-streamed NFL game ever at the time.
Not calling multiple playoff games is still a new role for Michaels, as this will be the only playoff game he will call this year. The broadcaster has called 11 Super Bowls, tied with Pat Summerall for the most play-by-play assignments for the event by a television commentator.
“Every game is a separate entity to me, and I prepare the same way,” Michaels said. “I talk to all of the people that I need to talk to, read everything I need to read. We’ve got some great research people as well. I have a great spotter in “Malibu” Kelly Hayes, who’s been with me for a million years, as well as my statistician, George Hill. It’s a combination of working together with these people in addition to studying tapes, talking to my sources around the league, etc. I treat a preseason game this way. I owe it to the audience. I don’t get nervous because I know I’m prepared. If I wasn’t prepared, I would be very nervous.”
As part of a wide-ranging interview — including Michaels’ reminiscing about hanging out with Don Rickles and meeting Frank Sinatra — I asked him how he viewed coverage of Tom Brady’s first year in the booth as a broadcaster.
“Well, in terms of Tom, jealousy is a very potent human emotion, and there are a lot of people that want to see Tom fail because Tom has everything, right?” Michaels said. “He’s got the résumé in football. He lives a life that a lot of people would like to live. So he is going to take a lot of heat.
“My personal opinion, and I don’t really weigh in on announcers a lot: I think he’s done a very good job, and I think he’s gotten better and better, and I very much enjoy listening to him. He’s working terrifically well with Kevin Burkhardt, and I think they make a really good combination. I’m a fan.
“Knowing Tom, as I have through the years as a player and as a friend, he is going to work his ass off, and he has, despite the fact that he’s sort of limited because he can’t go to certain meetings. But that doesn’t mean he is not going to be as prepared as anybody. He knows enough ways to figure out what’s going on.”
You can listen to the entire interview here.
NFL media notes
Amazon Prime Video’s coverage of “Thursday Night Football” averaged 14.23 million viewers this season, per Nielsen’s new Big Data + Panel measurement. Its top game was Green Bay Packers–Detroit Lions on Dec. 5, which drew 18.48 million viewers and a peak audience of 20.29 million viewers. (BD+P measurement features an enhanced methodology that combines data points from approximately 45 million households and 75 million devices with its person-level panel of more than 100,000 people to produce a deeper and more complete view of all Nielsen-measured programs.)
The streamer said its NFL audience had a median age of 49.0 years, nearly seven years younger than the average median age of viewers watching the NFL on linear TV (55.7) and more than 14 years younger than audiences watching prime-time broadcast television during the fall 2024 season (63.3). Amazon’s NFL pregame show, “TNF Tonight,” had an average audience of 1.53 million viewers in 2024, up 10 percent over its 2023 average (1.39 million).
Game 272 for the NFL was a viewership banger. NBC Sports said Monday that its Lions-Minnesota Vikings broadcast — the final game of the regular season — averaged 28.5 million viewers across NBC, Peacock, NBC Sports digital platforms and NFL digital platforms.
That makes it the third-most-watched game in the history of the NBC SNF package (since 2006), trailing only the Washington Commanders’ win over the Dallas Cowboys for the NFC East title in the 2012 season finale (30.3 million viewers) and the Kansas City Chiefs’ 27-20 win over the Baltimore Ravens in the 2024 NFL kickoff game (29.2 million viewers).
TGL averages nearly a million viewers on opening night. The debut of TGL, the new prime-time golf league founded by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy’s TMRW Sports in partnership with the PGA Tour, drew an average audience of 919,000 viewers on ESPN on Tuesday night. The broadcast peaked at 1.1 million viewers between 9:15 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. The second match of the season next Tuesday (ESPN, 7 p.m.) will feature the TGL debut of Woods.
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A selection of things I read over the past month that were interesting to me (note there are some paywalls):
• This was the most notable piece I read in the past 30 days: The Militia and the Mole. By Joshua Kaplan of Pro Publica.
• Why Do People (Including Netflix) Keep Missing the Point of Squid Game? By Alex Zalben of IGN.
• Historian Garrett M. Graff offered his best books of 2024.
• Via The Washington Post: Why seas are surging
• The police couldn’t figure out how the perpetrator ripped off two banks at the same time. Until they discovered there wasn’t just one robber but a pair of them: identical twin brothers. By Andrew Dubbins of The Atavist.
• Via The Athletic: How CT scanners are being used on trading cards: The ethical and legal issues it presents
• Nazi Ties to Credit Suisse Ran Deeper Than Was Known, Hidden Files Reveal. By Margot Patrick of The Wall Street Journal.
• Via The Athletic’s Zach Rosenblatt: Inside Mike Vrabel’s year off
• It’s Called a Premortem — And It’s the Most Productive Thing You’ll Do All Year. By Ben Cohen of The Wall Street Journal.
• The Washington Post’s Chuck Culpepper on members of the 1980 U.S. team’s hopes blighted by the Moscow Olympics boycott and how they felt about Jimmy Carter’s decision.
• These photos from The L.A. Times of multiple wildfires, fueled by fierce Santa Ana winds, are just devastating.
• A.J. Perez and Mike McCarthy of Front Office Sports reported on a 42-page lawsuit from former Fox Sports hairstylist Noushin Faraji that alleged network executive Charlie Dixon used “his position to sexually harass women” and on-air host Skip Bayless touched her inappropriately and propositioned her for sex. Host Joy Taylor was also accused of creating a hostile work environment. The Athletic story is here. Said a Fox Sports spokesperson: “We take these allegations seriously and have no further comment at this time given this pending litigation.”
• Can You Tell Me How to Get Someone to Save ‘Sesame Street’? By Alan Sepinwall of Rolling Stone.
• Ever wonder what happens to the coins tossed into the Trevi Fountain? By Elisabetta Povoledo of the New York Times.
• This was the best sports interview I read in 2024.
(Photo: Scott Halleran / Getty Images)
