NFL Explains Why This Season’s Ravens-Bengals Primetime Game Is in Cincinnati

Last week’s NFL schedule release revealed that the Cincinnati Bengals would host the Ravens in a primetime game on New Year’s Eve after four consecutive years of the teams playing in Baltimore under the lights.

It turns out last year’s primetime showdown at M&T Bank Stadium on Thanksgiving was originally going to be scheduled to take place at Cincinnati’s Paycor Stadium.

“Up until the last 24 hours, that Thanksgiving game last year was in Cincinnati,” NFL Executive Vice President of Media Distribution Hans Schroeder told The Athletic’s Paul Dehner Jr. “And we just saw something at the end when we tried to make the overall schedule a little bit better, including for the Bengals, it flipped it.”

After the 2025 schedule release, Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow said playing in Baltimore in primetime yet again “isn’t ideal. Maybe we can get one of those in Cincinnati next year. Please.”

Schroeder said the Bengals’ stance wasn’t lost on the powers that be.

“We look at trends, has somebody played in a certain window in a certain time a lot?” Schroeder said. “What are things that just feel like they should be equitable over time? And we went into last year’s process like, look, there’s been a good streak of Cincinnati at Baltimore. Let’s look and try to solve it.

“We went into this year saying it’s one of the things we do need to fix. It’s one of the things we should put our thumb on the scale and probably have a Thursday night that flips it a little bit so it’s a little bit more equitable between the Bengals and Ravens. … So we loved the idea when we saw it ending up on New Year’s Eve. We thought it’d be a fun way — in the Jungle in Week 17 — as a way to end ‘Thursday Night Football’ for the year.”

The Ravens have fared well in Cincinnati in recent years, albeit in afternoon games. They’ve won the past three meetings there, and Lamar Jackson is 5-0 as a starter in Cincinnati.