A matchup of two NFC North rivals propelled Amazon to its biggest Thursday Night Football audience yet.
According to Prime Video Sports PR, the Detroit Lions’ win over the Green Bay Packers averaged 17.29 million viewers on Thursday. That’s good for the most-watched regular season Thursday Night Football game since Amazon secured exclusive rights to the package. The audience peaked at 18.87 million viewers during the 9:15 p.m. ET quarter-hour.
🚨 A NEW RECORD! 🚨
Thursday’s @NFLonPrime game between the @packers and @Lions sets new all-time viewership highs, exceeding the previous record (Giants-Cowboys, 16.23M) by more than a million viewers! pic.twitter.com/VVjeSaxJTM
— PrimeVideoSportsPR (@PrimeSportsPR) December 9, 2024
The game beat out the Dallas Cowboys-New York Giants matchup in Week 4 of this season to take the title of most-watched Thursday Night Football game in the Amazon era. Cowboys-Giants averaged 16.22 million viewers in September. The previous record was 15.26 million viewers for Seahawks-Cowboys last season.
Lions-Packers was just the second game to eclipse the 15 million viewer mark this season, along with the aforementioned Cowboys-Giants game. Rounding out the top five Thursday Night Football games this year are Bills-Dolphins (14.96 million viewers), Commanders-Eagles (14.42 million viewers), and Steelers-Browns (13.72 million viewers).
The amount of divisional games that Amazon has on its schedule has certainly helped them reach new heights. Each of the top five games this season has featured divisional rivals, with two of the final three Thursday night games of the season also set to be clashes of division foes.
According to Jon Lewis of Sports Media Watch, Amazon’s Thursday Night Football package is up 9% year-over-year through this point in the season, averaging 13.61 million viewers versus 12.42 million viewers last year.
[Front Office Sports, Sports Media Watch]
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.