Amazon’s NFL bet already a Prime-time win
According to Nielsen, the first Amazon “Thursday Night Football” broadcast of the 2022 NFL season between Kansas City Chiefs and Los Angeles Chargers averaged 13 million viewers with local markets having 1.2 million of those viewers.
This number is much higher than what was expected by experts, who predicted that the figures would be less than Amazon’s expectation of 12.5 million viewers.
The Chiefs went on to win the game 27-24 with rookie Jaylen Watson having the game changing pick six which he took for 99 yards. This game viewing peaked with 14.6 million people watching between 10:45 and 10:59 p.m. ET.
Thursday Night Football Success
The first TNF is a sign of success for Amazon. In comparison to the 2021 “TNF” premiere, which aired exclusively on NFL Network and streaming, drew around 8.84 million total viewers. Also, in the three-hour period of the game, the tech giants experienced record signups more than any other day, including Prime Day, Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
It is important to also remember that Amazon Prime Video is not your normal linear television network, it’s an OTT (Over-the-top) platform. By marketing TNF heavily and having notable names alongside a big game, Amazon was able to drive Prime subscriptions. It is designed to drive online retail sales TNF is focused on acquiring more Prime sign-ups which it did.
Prime subscribers will not just watch TNF, but they will also buy more from Amazon and reap the benefits of their services such as Amazon Fresh, Amazon Music and same day delivery. All of these factors help make Amazon’s TNF first outing even more of a success for them.
A key point in which many viewers and experts were interested was the addition of the company’s so-called next-generation statistics as well as the play-by-play stylings of former “Sunday Night Football” announcer Al Michaels and college football analyst Kirk Herbstreit.
Alongside the commentary team, Amazon also invested in a star-studded broadcast team which included former NFL stars Andrew Whitworth, Richard Sherman and Ryan Fitzpatrick. The broadcast team also had award winning media personalities such as Taylor Rooks and Charissa Thompson to TNF.
Sustainable future?
All these combined made a successful broadcast and production in which viewers enjoyed the multiple flashy angles of the game, statistics and the very HD visuals which were smoother than most broadcasts.
Stacking Amazon feed against other broadcasters like CBS, ESPN, Fox and NBC is perhaps too early but the broadcast feed is perhaps as good as their competitors and will certainly be very competitive but won’t dominate.
Despite the success, there was a minor hiccup in which audio and visuals was out of sync on the main broadcast as many viewers saw during live action Al Micheals’ calls was a full second ahead of the visuals. Issues like these are no strangers to Amazon. They have had issues in the UK for their English Premier League feeds where fans had complained about the game being slower and audio not in sync.
The question for many is whether Amazon viewership figures are sustainable to help them be competitive. These numbers are great for Amazon as they look to make the most of their exclusive $1 billion/11-year deal, but the matchup between the Steelers/Browns will most certainly not have the same figures as the Chiefs/Chargers game.
Many media experts wonder with dog matchups such as Commanders vs. Bears, will these numbers sustain and meet Amazon expectations?
While other broadcasters like ESPN will have a better slate of games on Monday Night Football and still get better viewership than Amazon, even in the dog matchups they would outperform Amazon.
