Lakers News: LeBron James Announces Expansion Of Show "The Shop"

"The Shop" will provide live-streamed NFL coverage on Amazon Prime starting next month.

LeBron James continues to expand his entertainment empire. His show via Uninterrupted, "The Shop," will provide an alternative broadcast for Amazon Prime's Thursday Night Football slate of NFL programming ("TNF in The Shop"). The festivities kick off on November 17th, when the ascendant Tennessee Titans will square off against the stumbling Green Bay Packers.

James took to Instagram to make the announcement.

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Per Christy Piña of The Hollywood Reporter, James and his normal cohosts Maverick Carter and Paul Rivera will be joined by a rotating crew of guests for a "watch-party" type format, supplying an alternative broadcast option in contrast with Prime's traditional broadcast. It sounds like Prime is hoping to strike gold much like ESPN2 did with its Peyton and Eli Manning-hosted "Manningcast" watch-party football broadcasts.

The James-led broadcast is just the latest of several alternative options Prime is supplying for its Thursday football programming. It will join extant programs "TNF with Dude Perfect" (yes, this is a real thing) "TNF with Storm & Kremer, "TNF en Español" and "Prime Vision with Next Gen Stats."

Piña notes that the show will feature guests providing game commentary against a split screen of the live game in-progress, and indicates that, much like the flagship edition of "The Shop", conversations will extend beyond football to encompass other sports, as well as touching on the worlds of entertainment, business, current events and pop culture.

The main conceit of "The Shop" is that it features James, Carter and Rivera on a barbershop set, gathering with friends (who just happen to be incredibly famous celebrities) and chopping it up much like folks would in their neighborhood salons. It's a fun, free-flowing format that allows for plenty of frank, off-the-cuff dialogues. James has long been a huge football fan (and was named a two-time All-Ohio wide receiver in high school), so it makes sense that "The Shop" is branching out to the football space. This writer is most intrigued by the team's strategy for handling NFL game days that overlap with travel days and/or Lakers games. Presumably if there is a direct conflict James will either totally vacate that week's broadcast, or maybe just show up for a pregame chat, but what happens on the days James is, say, en route to a hotel during the anticipated broadcast window? Are we going to see The Chosen One in the back of a team bus being shuttled to a chilly Salt Lake City Hilton while making his game day picks? Time will tell.