Amazon’s Hail Mary play to bring the NFL to streaming looks like a touchdown in Week 1.The September 15 primetime Thursday Night Football gridiron battle on Prime Video between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Los Angeles Chargers scored 11.9 million viewers just on the Jeff Bezos-founded streamer, according to Nielsen.
The debut of the franchise on Prime Video actually bops up a bit more to 13 million when you add in local affiliates broadcasting of the tight game.Overall, it looks like TNF’s premiere on Prime Video further moved up to around 15 million sets of eyeballs when viewership on various devices is factored in, Amazon says.All of which backs up what Jay Marine VP Prime Video, Global Head of Sports, told staffers in a memo earlier this week: “Our first exclusive TNF broadcast delivered the most watched night of primetime in the U.S.
in the history of Prime Video.”In fact, Prime Video’s TNF debut was the most-watched show of the entire night on September 15.
In a bit of an apples to avocados comparison, the close two-hour game topped second place half-hour comedy Young Sheldon on CBS by 271% in total viewers.It is also a promise made and a promise kept, as Amazon had told media buyers earlier this year that it was aiming for about 12.5 million viewers per game with TNF on Prime Video.Not that any of this came cheap.Amazon paid $1 billion a year for an 11-year exclusive on Thursday night games.
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