Amazon’s Prime Video Registers its Most-Watched ‘Thursday Night Football’ Regular Season

Amazon’s Prime Video has secured its most-watched season of Thursday Night Football over the three seasons it has had the package, with the Big Data + Panel from Nielsen Media Research registering an average of 14.23 million viewers across 15 games. Nielsen introduced this measurement system before the start of the 2024 season, which combines data points from 45 million households and 75 million devices. Based on its methodology and a one-minute qualifier, the Thursday Night Football season was viewed by 91.1 million unique U.S. viewers, a 27% increase from the inaugural 2022 season. The peak viewership across the 15-game Thursday night slate was calculated at 15.93 million viewers.

In reviewing data from Nielsen’s Panel Only measurement, the broadcast property averaged 13.2 million viewers, indicative of an 11% rise in average viewership. When including the Black Friday Football game into these measurements, viewership proliferates to a 13% year-over-year improvement with an average of 13.22 million viewers. For the third consecutive year, Thursday Night Football featured a broadcast team of Al Michaels, Kirk Herbstreit and Kaylee Hartung.

“We could not be more proud of our partnership with the NFL, our viewership growth and the innovations we’ve initiated for fans and brands over these first three seasons of TNF on Prime,” Jay Marine, global head of sports and advertising at Prime Video, said in a statement. “Our production and tech teams are best-in-class, and with AWS and our outstanding team of data scientists, we’re pioneering the use of AI to advance the presentation of live sports in exciting ways, and we are just getting started.”

Within its second consecutive year of double-digit growth, Prime Video also garnered best-ever audience figures in P18-34, P18-49 and P25-54 demographics. The median age of viewers tuning in for Thursday Night Football coverage is 49 years, approximately seven years younger than the average median age for viewers watching the NFL on linear television. The P18-34 group averaged 2.61 million viewers (+9% YoY) for Thursday Night Football, which scored as the most-watched prime time NFL game of the week in the demographic eight times. Data also evinced that 7% of viewers in the P18-34 demographic were watching prime time broadcast television during the Fall 2024 season. Moreover, twenty percent of viewers for the broadcast property encompassed this group.

As it pertains to the P18-49 demographic, Thursday Night Football averaged 5.99 million viewers in the category (+9% YoY), which included 45% of viewers for the broadcast property. The P25-54 demographic averaged 6.55 million viewers, the highest in the history of the broadcast property. All three of the aforementioned demographics surpassed previous all-time highs set in 2015 when Thursday night games were split between CBS Sports and NFL Network. Furthermore, average viewership for Thursday Night Football among females was up 10% year-over-year, amassing 4.23 million viewers per game.

The TNF Tonight pregame show drew an average audience of 1.53 million viewers, a 10% year-over-year increase. The subsequent TNF Kickoff show, which also features Charissa Thompson, Andrew Whitworth, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Tony Gonzalez and Richard Sherma, had a P2+ audience of 5.59 million viewers, a 6% year-over-year improvement. Following the conclusion of the matchup, the 10-minute TNF Postgame show averaged 4.42 million viewers (+12% YoY) while the half-hour TNF Nightcap elicited an average of 2.04 million viewers. Additionally, Nielsen data conveys that the median household income for Thursday Night Football viewers is $101,800 during the 2024 season, estimated to be 16% higher than audiences of NFL games on linear networks.

Amazon is on the verge of completing its third season of Thursday Night Football, the second year under a 10-year broadcast agreement with the NFL for a reported $1 billion per season. The company will broadcast its first NFL playoff game within the Wild Card round this month in a matchup to be determined.

Starting last season, the company began televising an exclusive NFL game on Black Friday, with this year’s tilt between the Kansas City Chiefs and Las Vegas Raiders. The game averaged 13.51 million viewers (Nielsen Panel measurement), representing a 41% year-over-year increase, with viewership peaking at 18.68 million viewers (+60% YoY). The Week 14 game between the Green Bay Packers and Detroit Lions averaged 18.48 million viewers (Nielsen Big Data + Panel measurement), the most-watched game of the season and in the history of the franchise on Amazon.

A full list of P2+ average minute audience (AMA) viewership, as measured by Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel, can be found below:

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BSM Staff