Amazon Lands Exclusive Rights To Stream NFL Playoff Game

Amazon has won exclusive streaming rights for one National Football League game next season. The playoff will be available for viewers on the Prime Video platform, according to CNN.

This agreement was announced just under a month after NBCUniversal’s streaming service Peacock became the first platform ever to exclusively stream an NFL playoff game.

The Wild Card matchup playoff, which took place on Jan. 13 between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Miami Dolphins, made history as the most streamed event in U.S. history. The game was streamed by over 20 million viewers and led to a significant spike in audience traffic on the platform, “driving the Internet to its largest U.S. usage ever on a single day,” according to NBCUniversal.

According to a news release from NBC Sports, another Wild Card game that took place between the Cleveland Browns and Texas Houston Texans on the same date (Jan. 13) brought in an average viewership of 29.2 million across the following steaming platforms: NBC, Peacock, NBC Sports Digital, NFL Digital, and Telemundo. The game was ranked as the most-watched Saturday NFL Wild Card game on NBC since 2014.

A source close to the matter told CNN that Peacock did not lose exclusive rights to stream a playoff game. Instead, Amazon has earned the deal by reaching certain performance criteria in the company’s 2021 streaming deal with the NFL. This gave Amazon the sole right to stream “Thursday Night Football” beginning last season.

Referring to a Nielsen report, Amazon revealed a 24% rise in viewership year-over-year for this season’s “Thursday Night Football.”

In a news release revealing its financial figures for the final quarter of 2023, Amazon wrote, “The November 30 Seahawks-Cowboys game attracted 15.3 million viewers, becoming Prime Video’s most watched TNF game ever.”

This deal announcement has come just after Disney’s ESPN, Fox Corp. and Warner Bros Discover announced on Tuesday that they would together launch a sports streaming platform.