NFL Thursday Night Football On Amazon Prime Video Is Following Several Trends

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Prime Video exclusively streaming Thursday Night Football follows several trends. One is the continued migration of video content away from broadcast television to streaming video. This month alone the long-running unscripted show Dancing with the Stars will move from ABC to Disney+ for their 31^st season. Also, the daytime drama Days of Our Lives, which debuted on NBC in 1965, has just left the network to be streamed exclusively on Peacock.

Amazon Prime streaming Thursday Night Football however, will be far more impactful. In 2021, NFL games accounted for 75 of the 100 most watched TV programs. In addition, last season, Thursday Night Football averaged 16.4 million viewers across FoxFOXA
, NFL Network and Amazon, making it, among regularly scheduled prime time shows of 2021-22, second to Sunday Night Football.

With the Amazon agreement, the NFL continues to follow another trend of supporting nascent media outlets. In 1987, when only half of U.S. households were cable subscribers, ESPN began televising Sunday Night Football. In 1994 the fledgling Fox Network which had been regarded as “the fourth network” began televising NFL games on Sunday afternoon. Fox had outbid CBS which had been televising NFL games for 38 years. More recently, in 2015 Yahoo paid the league $20 million for the rights to live stream its first NFL game.

In exclusively streaming Thursday Night Football, the deep pocketed Amazon will pay the NFL $13 billion over the next eleven seasons. Each year Amazon will stream 15 regular season Thursday night games along with one preseason game. This is part of a new contract media companies made with the NFL with renewal agreements increasing between 40% and 80%.

When the new contract starts in 2023, NFL fans will have the opportunity to watch any game on streaming platforms. Disney will stream Monday Night Football on ESPN+, NBC’s Sunday Night Football will be available on Peacock, ParamountPARA
+ will stream the CBS package of games and Tubi, the Fox owned AVOD, will also stream live games. Hence, beginning next season every NFL game will be streamed.

Amazon says this season Thursday Night Football viewers will be able to stream games from amazon.com and the Prime Video app available on smartphones, tablets, set-top boxes, game consoles, and connected TVs. Additionally, Thursday Night Football games will be streamed live on Amazon’s Twitch and, similar to NFL cablecasts, will be available on over-the-air TV stations in the two home markets of the competing teams (as well as on smartphones and tablets on NFL+). The games will also be streamed in Spanish on Prime Video on the TNF en Español alternate stream.

An estimated 80 million U.S. Prime Video subscribers had watched the app at least once over the past year. Nielsen’sNLSN
Gauge report for July said Amazon Prime had a 3% share of total video viewing.

With kick-off at 8:15 p.m. (ET) each week, Amazon’s coverage begins at 7 p.m. (ET) with TNF Tonight. After each game, there will be TNF Postgame Show followed by TNF NightCap for further analysis. Amazon announced such interactive features as X-Ray which provides statistics in real-time and an alternate stream are available. In addition, with sports betting on the rise, Next Gen Stats from AWS is a feature.

In August, Amazon and DirecTV made a multiyear agreement allowing for 300,000 sports bars, restaurants, casinos, hotels and other out-of-home businesses to stream Thursday Night Football. DirecTV is in its final year of the NFL’s “Sunday Ticket” agreement which televises out-of-market games to subscribers. DirecTV has announced they will not be bidding for the upcoming rights renewal. The NFL is expected to announce a new media partner later this year with Amazon, AppleAAPL
and Disney reportedly interested in acquiring the rights. Apple is considered the frontrunner.

The Amazon-NFL agreement is the biggest foray between live sports being streamed. This season Apple TV+ and Peacock exclusively streamed a package of MLB games on Friday night and Sunday afternoon respectively. A number of regular season NHL games were streamed on ESPN+ last season. ESPN+ will also exclusively stream the Denver Broncos vs. Jacksonville Jaguars NFL contest on October 30 from London. Next season all MLS games will be streamed on Apple TV+. In recent years, Amazon 9n recent years has simulstreamed Thursday Night Football with Fox and the NFL Network. Amazon also streams locally a number of New York Yankees baseball games.

Earlier this year, Amazon made bids for the U.S. media rights to Formula One racing and soccer’s UEFAEFA
Champion’s League, losing out to Disney and Paramount respectively. Amazon does stream the UEFA Champion’s League in the U.K., Germany and Italy. Amazon also streams the U.S. Open (tennis) in the U.K. and Ireland as well as soccer’s English Premier League in the U.K.

This season, Amazon, which is primarily an ad-free service, is charging advertisers about $500,000 for a 30-second spot, less than the roughly $635,000 that Fox reportedly charged last year Standard Media Index reports, last season regular season NFL games generated a record $4.43 billion in ad dollars, a 14% increase from 2020. An additional game and higher ad rates were the contributing reasons.

According to Bloomberg, Amazon has told advertisers it has an abundance of data on Prime subscribers and could provide more targeted ads. In addition, Amazon is guaranteeing advertisers it will average 12.6 million viewers per game, nearly four million viewers below last year’s audience delivery.

In August Amazon reached a three-year agreement with Nielsen to measure the audience of Thursday Night Football. Measurement will include Amazon Prime, Twitch, the two local broadcast stations and include out-of-home viewing. Nielsen, which has been under attack by the media and advertising community for underreporting audiences, said this will be the first time they will provide live streaming to its National TV measurement service.

For Amazon’s lone preseason game (San Francisco 49ers vs. Houston Texans) on Thursday August 25, Nielsen reported an average audience of only 1.04 million viewers. The TVBVB
, a trade group promoting broadcast TV, noted 48% of the total viewers came from the two local market stations, San Francisco’s KTVU and Houston’s KRIV.

According to a survey from DISQO, only 12% of football fans are happy about NFL games being exclusively streamed. Nonetheless, 53% plan on watching games on digital platforms. To no one’s surprise, younger age groups who are “light” viewers of linear television are more likely to watch live streaming games. Amazon streaming games comes at a time when the median age of NFL viewers on linear TV is on the rise.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell noted, “I really believe that Amazon Prime’s going to change the way people watch football. There are so many people who aren’t watching linear television anymore, and they’re streaming. Goodell continued, “I believe we’ll be able to reach fans where they are, the way they want to engage, and also use more innovation to be able to engage them longer and differently than we have today.”

As advertisers continue to pursue younger audiences and with more data infused metrics from digital media used to target viewers, NFL games streamed on Amazon are following another trend.

Amazon Prime’s Thursday Night Football schedule includes several strong matchups and storylines.

Week 2 – Sept. 15: Los Angeles Chargers at Kansas City Chiefs

Week 3 – Sept. 22: Pittsburgh Steelers at Cleveland Browns

Week 4 – Sept. 29: Miami Dolphins at Cincinnati Bengals

Week 5 – Oct. 6: Indianapolis Colts at Denver Broncos

Week 6 – Oct. 13: Washington Commanders at Chicago Bears

Week 7 – Oct. 20: New Orleans Saints at Arizona Cardinals

Week 8 – Oct. 27: Baltimore Ravens at Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Week 9 – Nov. 3: Philadelphia Eagles at Houston Texans

Week 10 – Nov. 10: Atlanta Falcons at Carolina Panthers

Week 11 – Nov. 17: Tennessee Titans at Green Bay Packers

Week 13 – Dec. 1: Buffalo Bills at New England Patriots

Week 14 – Dec. 8: Las Vegas Raiders at Los Angeles Rams

Week 15 – Dec. 15: San Francisco 49ers at Seattle Seahawks

Week 16 – Dec. 22: Jacksonville Jaguars at New York Jets

Week 17 – Dec. 29: Dallas Cowboys at Tennessee Titans