Amazon Prime Video’s Thursday Night Football debut garnered significant audience traction. The September 15 broadcast brought a record number of new U.S. Prime subscribers over a three-hour period, Deadline reported.
The outlet received the information from an Amazon internal memo, which noted the number of new signups was higher than that during similar periods on Prime Day, Black Friday or Cyber Monday.
“By every measure, Thursday Night Football on Prime Video was a resounding success,” Jay Marine, global head of Amazon’s sports division, wrote in the memo. The actual number of new subs wasn’t disclosed.
Marine added the first TNF broadcast “delivered the most watched night of primetime in the U.S. in the history of Prime Video.”
Nielsen, which is responsible for providing national audience measurement of TNF games, has yet to release official viewership numbers for the match between the Los Angeles Chargers and the Kansas City Chiefs.
Fierce Video reached out to Nielsen and Amazon, but hasn’t received a response at this time of writing.
Amazon is set to broadcast 15 TNF games per NFL season for the next 11 years, paying around $1 billion annually for the streaming rights.
The next game, featuring the Pittsburgh Steelers versus the Cleveland Browns, is scheduled for September 22. Prime users have the option to watch the matches in English or Spanish, and they can choose to record TNF coverage, should they miss any live games.
Prime Video also saw a viewership surge with the premiere of “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” which drew 25 million global viewers on the first day of release. Amazon reportedly spent $715 million for the show’s first season, containing eight episodes.
Prime Video’s redesigned app might have an impact on recent viewership numbers. Alongside a cleaner looking UI, the app has an upgraded home page placing Prime’s live and programmed sports content in one location.
As TNF makes waves on Prime Video, the season’s first two Sunday Ticket games aired on DirecTV. However, football fans tuning into the Sunday Ticket have run into technical difficulties trying to load the games.
The 2022-23 season marks the last season in which DirecTV will have broadcast rights to the Sunday Ticket, as the sports package will head to a yet undetermined streaming service next year.
About 121.5 million people – across linear and digital – tuned into the first week of the NFL season, according to CNBC. An average of 18.5 million viewers watched each game that week.