After kicking off its run of 11 livestreaming NFL games on Sept. 28 with viewership that improved on Twitter’s 2016 season streams, Amazon’s second-week audience declined slightly.
Amazon Prime Video said the Oct. 5 matchup between the New England Patriots and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers reached a total of 1.7 million combined viewers worldwide for the NFL Thursday Night Kickoff pregame show and the game. For the game alone, 1.5 million worldwide viewers initiated a stream on Amazon Prime Video.
Those numbers are down from the 1.9 million combined viewers for the preshow and game, and the 1.6 million for the game alone that Amazon attracted for the Sept. 28 game pitting the Green Bay Packers against the Chicago Bears.
However, the average worldwide audience watching Thursday Night Football for at least 30 seconds on Amazon Prime Video rose to 391,000, up from 372,000 for the previous game. For the Oct. 5 game, Amazon viewers watched an average of 50 minutes each, down from an average of 55 minutes for the Sept. 28 game.
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Amazon appears to have snagged the lion’s share of the digital audience for last week’s game as well. According to the NFL, the combined average digital viewership across Amazon Prime Video, NFL Mobile from Verizon, Watch NFL Network, the NFL app on Microsoft, NFL Game Pass (International) and CBS digital platforms was 525,000.
While Amazon’s numbers were somewhat mixed for its second Thursday night game, the NFL overall audience metrics were an improvement over last season. The league said that the Oct. 5 game—which aired on CBS—delivered a 28% increase in viewership from last year's comparable Week 5 game. The game also aired on the NFL Network and the league said that more than 47 million viewers watched all or part of the game on the two networks combined.