Amazon Strikes $50M Deal With NFL To Stream Thursday Night Games

Amazon Prime members will soon be able to live-stream NFL ‘Thursday Night Football’ games as part of the retail giant’s expanding online video service.

Amazon to Stream Thursday Night NFL Games

The NFL and Amazon reached an agreement with Amazon in which the latter agreed to pay approximately $50 million for the streaming rights to the league’s games, according to a person familiar with the deal who spoke on the condition of anonymity since the price was confidential. The amount represents roughly five times the quantity ($10 million) Twitter agreed to pay the NFL last year for streaming rights to Thursday night games, the source added.

Unlike with Twitter, where anyone who logged on could see the games, only Amazon customers who pay for its Prime service will have access. Amazon charges $99 a year ($10.99 a month) for its Prime membership, which includes free shipping and a video service with a library of movies and TV shows.

Amazon bought video game streaming site Twitch, popular among sports fans, for $970 million in 2014.

The move is intended to cater to more NFL fans’ viewing preferences in an age where most customers of tech, entertainment and other types of companies prefer to use streaming and other online and digital services to watch games, movies or TV shows. The majority of these customers are choosing these types of products and services over traditional Cable television subscriptions. Amazon, like Netflix, is putting large amounts of money into its video services, (streaming or other) and both companies are licensing content and producing original programming.

Sports remain one of the few things most people opt to keep their TV subscriptions, however. Nevertheless, NFL ratings fell or stayed relatively unchanged last year for many NFL broadcasts, so the league is attempting to appeal to younger fans whose viewing preferences are more technologically advanced. The TV audience for ‘Thursday Night Football’ games last season, nevertheless, remained extraordinarily higher than the Twitter audience. The average viewership on Twitter at any given moment was 266,000, according to the NFL. That same figure for television, including broadcast and cable, was 15.8 million. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell recently said the league is planning to institute several changes aimed at shortening games and quickening their pace, partly by reducing the number and length of commercials, in order to make games more bearable for fans.

According to analysts, up to 60 million households use Amazon Prime’s services.

The downside of this deal between Amazon and the NFL is that the league risks alienating broadcast networks that pay hundreds of millions of dollars in rights fees.

Amazon will stream games aired by either NBC or CBS. Thursday night games will also air on NFL Network, the league’s cable channel. This is the second year of a two-year deal to simulcast the NFL Network’s airing of ‘Thursday Night Football.’ Both CBS and NBC pay $225 million each per year to broadcast five Thursday night NFL games every season.

HOUSTON, TX – FEBRUARY 01: NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell speaks with the media during a press conference for Super Bowl 51 at the George R. Brown Convention Center on February 1, 2017 in Houston, Texas. (Photo by Tim Bradbury/Getty Images)