The 2024 NFL season kicks off Thursday night, but fans won’t have to wait until Sunday to see more games. The NFL will play another game between the Green Bay Packers and the Philadelphia Eagles on Friday night.

The game will be played in Sao Paulo, Brazil. It will be the NFL’s first game in Brazil and South America as a whole.

But the game also marks another rarity in the NFL: a game played on a Friday. This is only the third time since 2010 that the league has scheduled a Friday game. Why is that? Here’s everything you need to know about Friday’s game.

The NFL airing a Friday game early in the season is virtually unheard of, and that’s because of the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961. The NFL can’t air games on a Friday (or Saturday) from the second weekend in September until after the second weekend in December. This year, the NFL was fortunate that Labor Day fell on Monday, September 2, meaning that coming weekend would not be considered the second weekend in September.

The NFL has decided to use this calendar year to host a Friday game that will be played outside the country.

The NFL has only played games on a Friday 12 times before the 2024 season. Interestingly enough, the first Friday game took place during the NFL’s first post-merger season in 1970, in Week 1. This year’s Week 1 Friday game marks the first time in 54 years that the league has scheduled such a game.

From that point on, the NFL temporarily stopped hosting games on Fridays, until they opted to host one every year from 1983 through 1986.

In 2005, there was an exception to the schedule when Hurricane Wilma forced a Miami Dolphins game to be moved to a Friday.

Apart from these few planned cases, the remaining Friday matches only took place if a public holiday fell on a Friday, such as Christmas Eve, Christmas Day or New Year’s Eve.

Last year, the first Black Friday game was played the day after Thanksgiving. This year, the new tradition will continue when the Las Vegas Raiders take on the Kansas City Chiefs on Friday, November 29. The NFL is allowed to host a Black Friday game as long as the majority of the game ends by 6 p.m. ET, according to the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961.