Super Bowl Switcheroo.
NBC and CBS Sports are swapping Super Bowl years, sources have told The Post.
CBS will move up a year in the Super Bowl rotation and broadcast the game played at the end of the 2020-21 season, while NBC will drop back to take the 2021-22 Super Bowl.
There is no compensation because it benefits both networks, sources said.
The move is being made because NBC would like to pair its Super Bowl with the 2022 Olympics. Having the mega-events back-to-back in one year makes selling advertising easier, as NBC will be able to make combo deals instead of competing against another network for many of the same sponsors.
For CBS, it now will avoid having its next Super Bowl going against the Olympics. If the switcheroo hadn’t happened, then the Super Bowl on Feb. 6, 2022, would be matched up against the Olympics that are set to begin Feb. 4 of that year from Beijing.
Instead, NBC would be able to figure out how to shift its programming and have the blockbusters of the Super Bowl and the Olympics.
NFL, NBC and CBS Sports spokespeople declined comment.
The Super Bowls, by far TV’s most-viewed evening of the year, will be broadcast in this order: Fox in 2020, CBS in 2021, NBC in 2022 and Fox again in 2023.
All the networks’ contracts are up after the 2023 Super Bowl, and ABC/ESPN, as previously reported, will want to crack the big game lineup.
The new leader of Turner Sports, Jeff Zucker, grew up in Miami as a huge Dolphin fan. The first season his family had season tickets was 1972, when he was 7 years old. The team went 17-0. He was a big tennis player as a kid and still plays today. His baseball team of choice is the Yankees.
So, sports are ingrained in him.
Now Zucker — who as head of CNN has been center stage on President Trump’s war with the media — will have an impact on where and how you see your sports.
After AT&T’s merger with Time Warner went through, Zucker became chairman of WarnerMedia, news and sports. He replaced David Levy, which means Turner will have a new top decision-maker.
Levy had a history at Turner, which includes current long-term deals with the NBA, its partnership with CBS on the NCAA Tournament and bringing MLB’s league championship series to cable.
For Zucker, the first major order of business is if Levy’s top lieutenant, Lenny Daniels, will stay on as Turner Sports president.
“I didn’t know I’d be here two weeks ago,” Zucker, 53, told The Post at his first event this week, Turner/CBS’ March Madness Media Day. “I’ve been in the job for one week. I think Turner Sports is incredibly well-run. I feel good about the team. I’m going to take the next 90 days, as we work through March Madness and the NBA playoffs, to just get a sense of everyone and get to know everyone better.”
Zucker began at Turner, working on the Goodwill Games in 1986, before becoming a researcher at the 1988 Olympics. From there his career took off, with the biggest bounce coming from his young leadership at the “Today” show, which eventually led him to the top of NBC. Former longtime NBC sports executives Dick Ebersol and Ken Schanzer have been mentors for him.
Zucker has preexisting relationships with Adam Silver, Roger Goodell and Gary Bettman, the commissioners of the NBA, NFL and NHL, respectively. He does not know MLB’s commissioner, Rob Manfred.
Turner’s baseball deal is up in two years, and ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro, another Yankees fan, is trying hard to take its playoff package, which includes divisional series and championship series.
In basketball, Levy and Daniels had already started planning on a transition from Marv Albert as its lead NBA announcer. The Post reported in November that Turner had broached moving Albert, 77, out of the No. 1 chair.
Albert does not want to be demoted, but Turner has the contractual right to keep Albert on games, but not its marquee events: the conference finals and the All-Star Game. After this season, Albert has two more years remaining on his deal.
Under the Levy/Daniels plan, the staid Brian Anderson, who works Turner’s MLB play-by-play, was the leading candidate to replace Albert.
With the NFL, Turner is expected to be a part of negotiations when the contracts come due in the ‘20s. ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” contract is up at the end of the ‘21-22 season, while the rest of the packages expire after ‘22-23.
Bleacher Report and B/R Live, Zucker said, are going to be a focus, as it is a direct challenger to ESPN+ in the category.