The streaming era is a polarizing topic, especially for sports fans. On one hand, fans have access to more content than they could ever possibly consume. On the other, it’s more expensive and more cumbersome than ever to actually follow the sports you want to watch. That’s what makes the Amazon Prime Video Black Friday marathon stand out.
You don’t have to switch apps to watch sports all day.
It may seem like a silly concept, but it’s something that is very real. In the halcyon days of cable, you could easily switch between games that you wanted to watch. You knew the channel numbers. It was easy.
But in 2025, things are vastly different. Is something on linear or is it on streaming? Do I have to open up YouTube TV or the ESPN app? Is it on NBC or Peacock? And will it show up on my home screen or do I have to go searching for it through unlimited archives in an app to find it? Oh, and that’s as long as there isn’t some kind of massive carriage dispute that will black out something that you probably want to watch.
That’s why the Amazon Prime Video Black Friday marathon is something that serves as an oasis in the desert for sports fans. You don’t have to go anywhere all day.
Black Friday has traditionally been a college football day. But like most other holidays in the fall, the NFL began to claim the day for themselves.
When the NFL first put a game on Black Friday in 2023, it was a genius cross-promotion with new streaming partner Amazon on the biggest shopping day of the year. It seems like it’s hard to imagine now, but we were still getting used to some of the biggest properties in sports appearing on streaming platforms. Now it’s become something that’s just a fact of life.
But fast forward to 2025 and Amazon is in a very different place as a sports outlet. They have deals with NASCAR, the WNBA, and the NBA to just name a few. And with this year being the first in their new NBA deal, they are wisely using the lead-in opportunity from an NFL game to air an NBA doubleheader with two attractive matchups between the Bucks and Knicks and Mavericks and Lakers.
They also extended it to a quadruple-header that starts at 9 a.m. ET in the morning with the resurrection of The Skins Game. It’s the perfect easy watch while you’re putting up Christmas decorations or just trying to recover from eating your own body weight in turkey on Thanksgiving.
The power of an NFL lead-in can’t be understated. We’ve seen bull riding and sailing reach multi-million figure audiences just because they are being played on Sunday afternoons after football. The audience that will just naturally stick around on Amazon Prime Video because there is an NFL game can’t be understated.
But it’s not just because sports fans are lazy, it’s because they are tired.
The effort that fans have to put in to find games and switch between apps can be exhausting and frustrating. Instead of one cable or satellite subscription, fans have to do calculus every day to figure out where something is being televised they want to watch. And then you add on the headache of all the different subscriptions and its no wonder that fans are crying out for things to be simplified.
In many ways, it’s one of the reasons why ABC has struck gold with their SEC tripleheader on Saturdays. It’s convenient! You can turn on ABC at noon and know that you’ll have three very solid to great games all day without even having to change the channel. Compare that to the Big Ten who is bouncing around network to network throughout the day with their “NFL model” between Fox, CBS, and NBC. If all those games aired on the same network, ratings would automatically increase. It’s one thing to just stick around and watch Penn State-Iowa if you don’t have to change the channel. It’s another thing if you have to go seek it out.
College football is a Black Friday tradition. There will be plenty of games throughout the day with playoff implications on various networks. But Amazon Prime Video might win the day because they are offering sports fans something they are desperately crying out for – convenience.
About Matt Yoder