According to estimates released by media research firm Nielsen, Amazon Prime (NASDAQ: AMZN) accumulated approximately 13 million viewers for its debut of Thursday Night Football last week.
Amazon is the very first streaming service to ever own exclusive rights to a set of NFL games in a $1 billion per year deal that will last throughout 2033. This past August, Amazon chose to collaborate with Nielsen in order to keep track of viewership data.
"By every measure, Thursday Night Football on Prime Video was a resounding success," Jay Marine, global head of Amazon's sports division, wrote this past Monday.
The viewership data from Nielsen was tracked from Prime Video subscribers in the United States who had access to set-top boxes, connected televisions, web and mobile, and Amazon's Twitch platform. In terms of Nielsen's local market ratings, it has been estimated that 602,000 people viewed Thursday Night Football in Los Angeles, while 555,000 people viewed the show in Kansas City.
On Monday, September 19, Amazon spoke of Thursday Night Football's success in a memo given by Jay Marine. He said that Thursday Night Football helped Amazon Prime Video to obtain a record high number of subscriptions.
"The audience numbers exceeded all of our expectations for viewership," Marine wrote in a memo. "During our TNF broadcast, we also saw the biggest three hours for U.S. Prime sign-ups ever in the history of Amazon - including Prime Day, Cyber Monday, and Black Friday."
According to Amazon Prime Video, in terms of viewership statistics, the average age of viewers was six years younger than the average of typical NFL games (47 years instead of 53 years). This particular stream of NFL also had an 18% higher rating than average NFL games thus far.
In addition, Amazon has decided to collaborate with DirecTV in order for the company to obtain viewership of Thursday Night Football in over 300,000 bars, restaurants, hotels , and casinos. Amazon Prime is currently priced at $14.99 per month (in full) or $8.99 monthly in order to watch the games.