Amazon's first exclusive regular-season presentation of NFL Thursday Night Football generated record signups over a three-hour window, comparable to shopping events such as Prime Day, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the online retail giant said.
“Our first exclusive TNF broadcast delivered the most watched night of primetime in the U.S. in the history of Prime Video,” Jay Marine, VP of Prime Video and global head of sports for Amazon, said in an internal memo leaked to the media. “This is a massive achievement."
The game featured a memorable NFC West matchup, with quarterback Patrick Mahomes rallying the Kansas City Chiefs over the San Diego Chargers and counterpart Justin Hebert 27-24.
How many viewers saw it on television? Unclear.
Also read: As NFL Kicks Off, Who’s Watching Amazon’s Thursday Night Football? (Bloom)
Amazon, which assumed total control of the TNF franchise with an 11-year deal that pays the NFL around $1 billion per season, has told advertisers to expect around 12 million viewers to tune in each week for TNF, with the base of U.S. Prime Video subscribers standing at around 80 million.
Very dialed-in Sports Business Journal reporter Jon Ourand has said that a more realistic performance for a competitive game is around 5 million - 7 million viewers. He called the 33.6/57 share rating in Kansas City "probably a little bit below what TV networks typically get from that market."
TNF is coming off its best audience season since 2015, averaging 16.4 million viewers in the 2021 season running across FOX broadcaset, NFL Network, Amazon Prime Video, FOX Deportes, NFL digital and Fox Sports digital, along with Twitch and Yahoo Sports mobile platforms.
