General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

NFL on Prime Video

NFL on Prime Video is the package of National Football League games streamed on Amazon's Prime Video service, anchored by exclusive rights to Thursday Night Football (TNF) since the 2022 season. The package also includes the day-after-Thanksgiving Black Friday game and, in some seasons, a Wild Card playoff game. It was the NFL's first exclusive national broadcast package sold to a digital streaming service.¹

Key fact	Detail
Core package	Exclusive Thursday Night Football rights under a 10-year agreement; 15 regular-season games per year plus one preseason game, up from 11 games in the shared arrangement¹
Cost	Roughly $1 billion per year, more than $10 billion over the term²
Exclusivity start	2022 season (deal signed March 2021; games streamed as part of a Prime membership from 2023)²^•¹
Other games	Black Friday game each season; a Wild Card Round playoff game; in 2026 the Black Friday game is Broncos–Steelers on November 27³^•⁴
Record audience	Broncos–Chiefs on Christmas 2025 averaged 21.1 million viewers, the largest TNF audience since the move to Prime Video⁵
Season average	15.3 million viewers for Thursday night games in the 2025 season, the best average in the 20 years the league has had a Thursday package⁶
Announce team	Play-by-play announcer Al Michaels, analyst Kirk Herbstreit, and sideline reporter Kaylee Hartung, with a full Spanish-language broadcast⁷

Rights history

Amazon's involvement with Thursday night football began in 2017, when the NFL and Amazon struck a deal for the company to stream TNF games non-exclusively alongside traditional broadcasters.² From 2018 to 2021, Prime Video shared the rights with Fox and NFL Network in a tricast (rights shared among three broadcasters simultaneously) model, and co-streaming the games on Twitch was a core part of Amazon's strategy for reaching new audiences.⁸^•⁹ In April 2020, the existing 11-game package was expanded to include one exclusive regular-season game per year.¹

The exclusive deal. In March 2021 the NFL agreed to license all TNF games exclusively to Amazon, the first time the league licensed a national package to a technology company. Beginning in 2023, Prime Video would carry and produce the games for 10 years at roughly $1 billion per year.² The exclusive package actually began with the 2022 season, a year earlier than 2023.¹⁰ The package grew from 11 to 15 regular-season games per year, with one preseason game added, and includes X-Ray with Next Gen Stats features for Prime members in the United States.¹ Under the NFL's long-standing commitment to free over-the-air television, each game is also televised in the participating teams' home markets.¹

Production was initially handled under a deal with NBC Sports, whose longtime Sunday Night Football executive producer Fred Gaudelli led Prime Video's NFL production; Prime Video later moved to producing the package independently.¹¹

Broadcast presentation

The main broadcast features Al Michaels on play-by-play, Kirk Herbstreit as analyst, and Kaylee Hartung as sideline reporter, with a full Spanish commentary feed available.⁷

Prime Vision with Next Gen Stats. Prime Video produces an alternate feed that uses artificial intelligence and player-tracking data to explain the game. In one noted example, a defensive alert on screen flagged that Rams linebacker Christian Rozeboom might rush the quarterback; he did, and sacked Brock Purdy to end a December 2024 game. The feed uses the same primary announce team, with analyst Sam Schwartzstein joining at set points to explain Next Gen Stats insights. Its biggest presentation change has been making the skycam the primary camera, giving the same elevated vantage point as the Madden video game and a view of all 22 players; before the November 2024 switch, the primary view had been the all-22 sideline camera.¹²

Streaming technology

Live delivery is built on Amazon Web Services, with autoscaling and multi-region architecture designed to keep availability better than broadcast for perishable live content. By 2024, all critical customer journeys supported multi-region operation.¹³ Amazon's stated goal for live events is latency under 10 seconds; by 2020 the company had developed proprietary technology to synchronize its feed on a global clock and reduce latency below 10 seconds, which it described as often faster than cable and satellite.¹⁴^•⁸ During the January 2025 AFC Wild Card stream, measured latency averaged about six seconds on Fire TV devices, with higher delays in desktop browsers.¹⁴

Viewership

Audience growth under exclusivity has been substantial. The 2025 TNF season averaged 15.33 million viewers, up from 13.65 million in 2019 when games aired on Fox, NFL Network, and Prime Video, and the audience has increased 60% since Prime Video became the exclusive home in 2022.¹⁵ The 2025 season average of 15.3 million for Thursday night games is the best in the 20-year history of the league's Thursday package; the separately negotiated Black Friday game drew 16.3 million.⁶

Record games. The Christmas 2025 Broncos–Chiefs game averaged 21.1 million viewers, the third time that season Prime Video set a platform best for TNF, after Cowboys–Lions drew 19.4 million earlier in the season.¹⁶ The January 10, 2026 Wild Card playoff game between the Green Bay Packers and Chicago Bears posted a 9.82 national Live+1 rating and 31.6 million impressions among people 2+, a figure promoted as the most-watched NFL game ever on a streaming platform, though it includes local broadcast viewership in the Green Bay and Chicago home markets.¹⁷

Demographics. Prime Video has drawn the youngest median-age NFL audience among rights holders: 49 years across its 15 telecasts in the 2024 season, with 20% of its audience in the 18–34 range.¹⁸ On game days in October 2025, Prime Video's share of total TV viewing jumped to 6.4% on Thursdays, three points above its monthly average.¹⁹

Context in the NFL's media landscape

The Prime Video package sits within a broader rights portfolio that also includes Disney (ESPN/ABC), Paramount (CBS/Paramount+), Fox Corporation, NBCUniversal (NBC/Peacock), NFL Network, Google (YouTube), and Netflix.²⁰ Streaming audiences remain smaller than broadcast on average: a TVB study of Nielsen data found the highest-rated game of the weekend of the Packers–Bears playoff stream was on Fox, with a 12.73 rating and 40.97 million impressions.¹⁷ Still, Prime Video ranks among the most-used sources for viewing NFL games, second to local broadcast networks at 38% of fans in one Kagan survey.²¹

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Unscripted, reality, and web-native series › Web-native and streaming-original series › Comedy, drama, and general-genre web series › Premiered 2017 to 2021

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026