Amazon Prime Video Execs Prep Data-Rich Update Of ‘Thursday Night Football’, Share Plans For Improving On Weekly Live Streams That “Hadn’t Been Done Before”
deadline.comAfter Amazon Prime Video spent the offseason doing what tech giants are wont to do — analyze and iterate — the company will kick off Thursday Night Football 2.0 tonight as the Minnesota Vikings visit the Philadelphia Eagles.
Last season marked the start of a $13.2 billion, 11-year exclusive rights deal with the NFL for Thursday games, which had been carried by linear networks and simulcast by Prime for several prior seasons.
It also represented a milestone for the sports media business, with the standard-bearing league going all-in on streaming, risking a chaotic leap into the digital void that could have fomented viewer and advertiser confusion.
The bet largely paid off. “We were learning week to week, especially things that maybe you weren’t seeing,” said Jared Stacy, Director, Live Production, Prime Video, in an interview with Deadline at the company’s offices in New York’s Hudson Yards. “The big-picture headline is, it went really well for us.” He cited the caliber of the production and the quality and stability of the stream as successes, “especially when you take into account the size of the audience we were streaming to every week.
Read more on deadline.com
