Technology giant Amazon has extended its ‘Thursday Night NFL’ streaming rights contract for a further two seasons in a deal worth $130 million.
The NFL’s has confirmed that Amazon Prime Video will continue to be its lead internet streaming platform service for Thursday night games.
Jeff Blackburn, Senior Vice President of Entertainment at Amazon commented: “Our customers love to stream football — last year, we successfully debuted NFL Thursday Night Football on Prime Video in the U.S. and around the world. We’re thrilled to continue our relationship with the NFL and offer Prime members another two seasons of Thursday Night Football.”
As part of the deal, Amazon will stream 11 games on a Thursday night, all of which will also be broadcast and co-produced by FOX Sports.
Through its Prime Video service, Amazon details that the NFL content will be made available to the over 100 million Amazon Prime members worldwide in over 200 countries/territories.
Amazon renews its NFL OTT contract, following a successful first year of streaming Thursday night matches. In 2017, the retail giant took over the streaming contract from Twitter, who ‘failed to find an audience’ for its NFL content.
Despite Amazon’s renewal as streaming partner, NFL concerns remain regarding the league’s drop in live game viewership recorded during season 2017/18.
The NFL’s 2017/18 regular season broadcasts, recorded a network-wide 9.7% decline in audiences. Adding further concerns for lead NFL broadcasters; NBC, ESPN and FOX Sports, ‘Sunday Night Football’ games failed to break the target 20 million viewership mark, which saw broadcasters compensate advertisers for the audience shortfall.
