I forgot, at times on Thursday evening, that I was watching an NFL game streamed live on Amazon Prime Video rather than a traditional TV broadcast from one of the league’s longtime network television partners.
A good game, for starters, and they got that with the Kansas City Chiefs rallying to beat the visiting Los Angeles Chargers 27-24 in a contest that featured a game-changing 99-yard pick-six and a dude getting a WWE body slam.
The online retail behemoth and the NFL — Roger Goodell and Jeff Bezos sat together during the game — also could hope for a big audience, but we won’t know until next week how many people watched. The digital age isn’t always instant with data.
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While I forgot at times the game was a streaming exclusive (except in Kansas City and L.A., where it was simulcast on local TV), Amazon did its best to remind anyone watching that yes, this is “Thursday Night Football” on Prime Video with a string of commercials advertising its products, services and streaming programs. For $1.2 billion a year to exclusively stream 15 TNF games this season, that’s certainly Amazon’s right.
Here’s my quick-and-dirty review of the regular-season premiere of TNF on Amazon Prime Video. I watched mostly on my connected TV while dipping into the alternate broadcasts on my phone.
UNREAL. 7th-round rookie @JaylenWatson12 just went 99 yards for a Pick-6! 🔥 #ChiefsKingdom #LACvsKC on Prime Video Also available on NFL+ https://t.co/Fa02SqPmRn pic.twitter.com/b2f4GIup1G — NFL (@NFL) September 16, 2022
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BOOTH: Amazon inked veteran broadcasters Al Michaels and Kirk Herbstreit to big contracts — reportedly $10 million-plus each annually — to immediately give the games credibility with fans. Hard to argue with that strategy. Their rapport seems natural, easy, and feels like they’ve done this together for more than two live games (Amazon did a preseason TNF game, too). Michaels was the Michaels we’ve known for a half-century of broadcasting live sports. Herbstreit, who’s been in the TV booth since 1996, offered his usual brand of insight and analysis. They cracked a few jokes. Sideline reporter Kaylee Hartung and rules analyst Terry McAulay had only limited airtime in the segments I watched.
PICTURE: Sharp. Colorful. Vivid. The Chargers’ road whites with the powder blue inadvertently were a reminder of Amazon’s blue and white logo. The digital down-distance projected on the field during a play uses a clever variation of the Amazon logo arrow. Silly, perhaps, but not intrusive. The sky cam and other cameras and angles were what you’ve come to expect from major network game broadcasts — and one in particular I appreciated but thought not used enough: A cam that’s mounted just above the down marker that lays on the white grass of the sideline.
SOUND: The halftime marching band show at times made the crew of Charissa Thompson, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Tony Gonzalez and Richard Sherman a little hard to hear, but that’s not going to be a regular occurrence, I suspect. I didn’t hear much in the way of on-field microphones with players and coaches — which is a nice departure from the USFL broadcasts this spring that went hog wild at times with player, sideline, officials and booth audio overlapping.
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ADVERTISING: As expected, there was a wave of Amazon products and services (Amazon Web Services, Ring, Fire TV, Audible, Freevee) and shows (especially “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power”). Expect that to continue not because Amazon needs to fill commercial airtime during NFL games but because part of its business strategy with the NFL is to get more eyeballs on its
— selling stuff. There also were several NFL and NFL-adjacent spots and the usual cadre of major brands such as Little Caesars, Mercedes-Benz, Carnival Cruise Line, T-Mobile, Progressive (without Baker Mayfield) and United Airlines. But because it was an Amazon streaming property, there was a handful of tech commercials such as Apple, Best Buy/Samsung, Airbnb, Intuit’s Mailchimp, Instacart and Nerd Wallet.
WHAT WORKED: Just about everything. It felt like Amazon has been streaming these games solo for a long time rather than twice. The Next Gen stats and factoids on the Amazon X-Ray stream were interesting, and if you’re a fantasy player, gambler, or genuine numbers and trivia nerd like me, it’s awesome. I had zero issues with latency (see below).
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Live all-22 with next gen stats. We’ve done it, people. The endless complaining about tv copy angles on Twitter… someone was listening 🥲 pic.twitter.com/lumbaK0MRl — Ted Nguyen (@FB_FilmAnalysis) September 16, 2022
WHAT DIDN’T: Nothing major. Any sound issues are quick fixes. If you dislike gambling, you may tire of the DraftKings commercials, but tough luck because the gambling outfit has a deal with Amazon as a TNF sponsor and oddsmaker. I also thought the Dude Perfect alternative broadcast didn’t do much, but I dipped in only a few times because it distracted from the game. Not my thing, but I’m curious to learn what other alt-booths Amazon deploys this season.
PRODUCTION QUALITY: Amazon has poured millions of dollars into creating a streaming sports network, and it showed last night. Credit the ecommerce giant with bringing in highly regarded industry veterans such as NBC Sports veteran Fred Gaudelli as executive producer and former NFL Network executive Mike Muriano, too. The network reportedly also has a deal with NBC to help with production in addition to buying a fleet of mobile production trucks and all sorts of toys and gadgets. Expect more aspects to roll out as the season progresses.
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STREAMING QUALITY: Without getting into the weeds of the technical stuff, streaming has built-in latency to allow the content to reach your screen in the quality you expect. Latency can be problematic for live sports if the stream is more than a few seconds behind the real-time action. Last night’s TNF on my TV (a Samsung model from several years ago, connected to a PlayStation 5) and phone (Samsung Galaxy S10) latency was not an issue. The phone and TV were occasionally a few seconds different. That may not be true for everyone but it was for me.
VIEWERSHIP: This is the big one. We won’t know until next week how many people actually watched the game. Amazon hired Nielsen, which has measured TV audiences since the early 1950s, to track TNF viewership in all aspects: streaming on Prime itself, streaming on Amazon-owned Twitch, traditional TV viewing in the participating teams’ home markets, and out-of-home (people watching at sports bars, restaurants and at other homes with high-speed internet).
The preseason Amazon game (Texans routing the 49ers on Aug. 25) was viewed by a reported 1.035 million people, and that broke down as 515, 000 streaming and 520, 000 who watched on linear TV, per Sports Business Journal. That was about on par for a traditional preseason game, and it streamed against another game that Thursday night on regular TV.
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Amazon has been pumping its football streaming as part of its marketing efforts online and in the physical world — it’s even on the company’s ubiquitous delivery boxes.
The Amazon Prime Video app reportedly has about 80 million U.S. subscribers, and there are an estimated 172 million domestic Amazon Prime subscribers (who pay $139 annually or $15 a month for just the video app) and 200 million globally. Keep in mind that only some subscribers will stream TNF.
Amazon reportedly has told media buyers to expect a bit over 12 million viewers for its 15 TNF games this season, which would be a decline from last season when TNF averaged 16.4 million combined viewers on Fox, NFL Network and Amazon Prime Video (which streamed simulcasts). The audience totals should improve as more fans learn that TNF is streaming-only now. The overall NFL regular season averaged 17.1 million viewers per game in 2021, and last week’s slate of games to open 2022 averaged 18.5 million per-game viewers.
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NFL executives have said they’re not worried much about the week-to-week numbers, instead focusing on Amazon delivering a product that meets fan expectations, after which they say the numbers will grow.
Also, it’s important to keep in mind that sports viewership is driven by many factors beyond broadcast versus cable versus streaming. The participating teams, storylines and wider implications, star players, thriller or blowout, etc., can all affect audience size. Last night featured many ratings-favorable aspects.
UP NEXT: Amazon’s second game, the Week 3 match-up, is an even bigger test when the Pittsburgh Steelers visit the Cleveland Browns on Sept. 22 in a classic NFL rivalry that dates to 1950.
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Bill Shea is an award-winning reporter and editor who worked for daily newspapers in Ohio and Michigan for nearly 25 years. Prior to joining The Athletic, he spent 13 years as a reporter with Crain's Detroit Business, creating the sports business beat to the point that Forbes named him a Twitter must-follow on the topic for four consecutive years. Shea spent 2006-07 moonlighting as the last-string quarterback on a minor-league football team, an experience that will feature prominently in his eventual debut novel. A Cleveland native and jaded devotee of its star-crossed sports teams, he lives today in suburban Detroit, just across
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