AMAZON SECURES EXCLUSIVE RIGHTS TO NFL’S THURSDAY NIGHT GAMES

Amazon and the National Football League sealed a 10-year agreement to exclusively broadcast 15 Thursday Night Football games and one pre-season game per year on Prime Video in the United States. The deal includes15 exclusive regular-season Thursday Night Football games and one pre-season game per year to Prime Video. “Thursday Night Football will be our first-ever digital package and we are thrilled to exclusively partner with Amazon to bring our games to more fans on more platforms,” said NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. “NFL football drives passionate viewers and Amazon will enable us to continue to grow our fanbase in innovative and compelling ways.”

The Prime Video deal begins in 2023 and is the NFL’s first exclusive national broadcast package with a digital streaming service. The number of regular-season games included in the Thursday Night Football package is increasing from 11 to 15, with all games airing on Prime Video as part of a Prime membership. “NFL games are the most-watched live programming in the United States, and this unprecedented Thursday Night Football package gives tens of millions of new and existing Prime members exclusive access to must-watch live football on Prime Video,” said Mike Hopkins, SVP of Prime Video and Amazon Studios. “NFL fans from across the country will enjoy a premium viewing experience with Thursday Night Football, as well as access to a broad selection of content including award-winning Amazon Originals available on Prime Video.”

The service will now offer new pre-game, half-time, and post-game shows, and it will continue to offer fan-favorite interactive features such as X-Ray and Next Gen Stats. As part of the new deal, Prime Video also secured rights to a weekly slate of original NFL programming and expanded rights to in-game highlights for all NFL matchups and each game will be televised in the participating teams’ home marketplaces. The two companies will continue to collaborate on exclusive NFL content and viewer features, with more information to be released ahead of the first game in 2023. 

In April 2020, Amazon and the NFL expanded the existing 11-game Thursday Night Football package on Prime Video to include one exclusive regular-season game per year, the first of which was played on December 26 between the San Francisco 49ers and the Arizona Cardinals. The matchup drew an estimated 11.2 million total viewers and delivered the highest digital average-minute audience ever for an NFL regular-season game. Additionally, since 2017, the NFL has used Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its official cloud and machine learning provider for Next Gen Stats.