Amazon Nabs Streaming Rights to NFL’s ‘Thursday Night Football’ Games

Cynthia Littleton

Amazon has set a deal with the NFL for streaming rights to 10 “Thursday Night Football” games in the upcoming season.

The one-year pact is valued at around $50 million, according to a source close to the situation. Twitter had streaming rights to the games in the 2016 season, the first time the league cut a rights deal for a package of games with an online-only partner.

The 2017 games are expected to be made available to Amazon Prime subscribers.

Amazon confirmed the deal but did not elaborate. The NFL declined to comment.

Amazon’s rights fee is said to be about five times the price paid for the 2016 package by Twitter. The deal came together quickly in recent days, with a source noting that Amazon aggressively pursued the package.

The TV rights to the 10 “Thursday Night Football” games are split evenly between CBS and NBC, with the NFL Network cabler also getting simulcasts of the games. In early 2016, CBS and NBC inked a two-year deal for “Thursday Night Football” TV rights at an estimated cost of about $225 million for each network.

The new streaming rights pact comes as the NFL and its TV partners are looking to overhaul the on-air presentation of games, the placement of commercial breaks and aspects of game play designed to speed up the action on the gridiron. Last year, Twitter picked up the game feeds produced by CBS and NBC. It’s unclear if that will change in the Amazon deal.

Over the 10 NFL games to which it had streaming rights last season, Twitter averaged 2.7 million viewers who tuned in for at least three seconds of a given telecast, according to data released by the league. That translated to 265,800 viewers on a per-minute basis.

Amazon already is in business with the NFL on “All or Nothing,” an unscripted series chronicling the return of the Rams NFL franchise to Los Angeles after 20-plus years in St. Louis. The series was renewed for a second season last week.

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