The Amazon Prime Video streaming service is reportedly set to pay around $150 million for exclusive rights to a playoff game from American football’s top-tier NFL next season.
Earlier this month, multiple media reports indicated that Amazon – which already holds Thursday Night Football regular-season rights – was on the verge of landing exclusive rights for one playoff encounter during the 2024 campaign, to put on Prime Video.
Those reports came out following the clash during last season’s wild-card playoff round between the Kansas City Chiefs (eventual Super Bowl 58 winners) and the Miami Dolphins, which became the first-ever playoff clash from the NFL to be covered exclusively by a streaming service – in that case, Peacock, owned by NBCUniversal.
Now, CNBC has reported that Amazon will displace Peacock in terms of covering that streaming-exclusive one playoff game during the 2024 campaign and that it will stump up $150 million to do so. The playoff fixture in question will likely also be a wild-card game, according to reports.
Peacock paid $110 million for the Chiefs v Dolphins clash, which drew an average of 23 million viewers exclusively on the streaming service (a streaming record), and an average minute audience of 3.1 million viewers. That fixture was the first-ever NFL clash to be covered exclusively by Peacock.
Amazon, meanwhile, currently pays $58.8 million for each regular-season TNF clash it covers, Forbes has claimed. Paying $150 million for a single playoff encounter would, therefore, represent a per-game increase of close to triple in value.
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By GlobalDataIn early January, it was disclosed that Amazon’s TNF viewing numbers had increased by 24% during the regular 2023 campaign.
During its second season holding rights to the games, Prime Video averaged 11.86 million viewers compared to the 2022 numbers of 9.58 million.
Amazon began its exclusive deal to show 15 TNF games per season a year earlier than planned in 2022 after initially securing the exclusive rights for 10 years beginning with the 2023 season. Before that, Amazon shared the rights to the games with Fox and the league’s NFL Network between 2018 and 2021.
The domestic TNF rights represented one of the streaming heavyweight’s first forays into live sports.
The other broadcasters set to cover the NFL next season are NBC, Fox, CBS, ESPN, and ABC, while YouTube TV holds out-of-market Sunday Ticket rights.