Amazon.com Inc.'s Prime Video tallied its most-watched NFL season with "Thursday Night Football," but it still fell short of linear television's reach.
Prime Video’s third season of "Thursday Night Football" averaged 13.20 million viewers, including viewership from broadcast stations in the participating teams' home markets. That was up 11% from 11.86 million in the 2023 season, according to Nielsen Holdings PLC data. It was also up 38% from Prime Video’s 2022 rookie season, which saw 9.58 million average viewers. Adding in the Kanas City Chiefs-Las Vegas Raiders matchup on Black Friday, which is not part of the "Thursday Night Football" package, Prime Video scored a 13% gain to 13.22 million watchers, versus 11.71 million.
Gauged under Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel measure, the "Thursday Night Football" full-season average minute audience was 14.23 million. With this methodology, Nielsen coalesces data points from 45 million households and 75 million devices with their person-level panel of more than 100,000 people. This system — combining information from set-top boxes, smart TVs and viewer panels — will be widely integrated across the measurement landscape in 2025.
This season, "Thursday Night Football" scored its two largest audiences yet on Prime Video, with 17.29 million for the Green Bay Packers-Detroit Lions on Dec. 5 and 16.22 million for Dallas Cowboys-New York Giants on Sept. 26. All told, four "TNF" windows topped the 15 million mark in the 2024 season, versus two in the previous two campaigns combined.
Despite this growth, Prime Video's "Thursday Night Football" fell short of the 16.4 million average audience for the 2021-22 season, when FOX (US), FOX Deportes (US),, NFL Network (US) and Prime Video jointly provided coverage.
While the size of Prime Video's audience may be smaller, it is also younger — making it attractive to advertisers. Throughout the 2024 season, the median viewer age was 49.0 years, nearly seven years younger than the median age — 55.7 — of viewers watching the NFL on linear TV, according to Amazon.
The streamer’s NFL audience is also more affluent: Nielsen data showed "Thursday Night Football" viewers had a median household income of $101,800, 16% higher than the comparable NFL average on linear networks.
The 2024 season marked the top performance in the 19-year history of "Thursday Night Football" among persons 18 to 49, with 5.99 million of those viewers, up 9% from 5.49 million in 2023. The previous high mark of 5.79 million was set in 2015, when the games were on broadcast and cable.
Throughout the 2024 season, 45% of Prime Video's "Thursday Night Football" viewers were in that so-called "key demo," compared to 34% of viewers watching the NFL on linear networks.
Looking into the post-season, Prime Video will conclude its NFL season with its first playoff game, a Wild Card contest on Jan. 11 or Jan. 12. Amazon will look to challenge the NFL streaming records set by Netflix Inc. on Christmas Day. The first Netflix game, which saw Kansas City top the Pittsburgh Steelers 29-10, averaged 24.1 million US viewers. In the second, in which the Baltimore Ravens crushed the Houston Texans 31-2, drew 24.3 million. Beyonce’s halftime performance attracted 27 million viewers.
Last season, NBCU’s Peacock averaged 23.0 million watchers in prime time for the Chiefs' 26-7 Wild Card win over the Miami Dolphins.