Amazon Prime’s hold on the NFL keeps growing.
The streaming company will have exclusive streaming rights for an NFL playoff game next postseason, according to multiple reports on Friday.
Amazon paid $11 billion for 11 years of “Thursday Night Football” rights in 2021, and went on to make history by hosting the first-ever Black Friday NFL game, which saw the Miami Dolphins beat the New York Jets 34-13. The company made the stream free for everyone, even non-Amazon Prime subscribers.
But It was NBCUniversal’s Peacock that claimed the rights for the league’s first exclusively live-streamed NFL playoff game in January. The AFC Wild Card game was a 26-7 win over the Miami Dolphins for the Kansas City Chiefs. On Sunday, the Chiefs will face the San Francisco 49ers in the Super Bowl.
Even though some fans weren’t happy about having to subscribe to Peacock during the playoffs, NBC indicated that the inaugural stream averaged 23 million viewers to become the most-streamed even in American history. Now, the company is being replaced by Amazon.
The news was first reported by the Wall Street Journal’s Joe Flint, who added that NBCUniversal contested for an opportunity to host a playoff game again. NBCUniversal paid at least $110 million for the exclusive rights to that game, and Prime Video will reportedly pay even more. But Amazon Prime’s victory was powered by strong metrics from Thursday Night Football that triggered performance clauses, per USA Today.
Prime Video averaged 11.86 million viewers over 16 games this season, according to Nielsen. It was a 24% increase over the start of the company’s foray into NFL streaming last season. Twelve of Amazon’s games averaged more than 10 million viewers this campaign.
The NFL only had a Wild Card contest to deal out, as the divisional round and conference championship games have been accounted for since a round of media rights deals in 2021 that will last until 2033.
Under those agreements, NBC, CBS, FOX and ESPN/ABC each boast one divisional round game, while CBS and FOX share conference championship privileges.
Super Bowl LVIII will air on CBS, accompanied by a simultaneous kid-friendly version on Nickelodeon.
