Prime Video touts ‘Thursday Night Football’ season as most-watched in series history

In the 20-year history of Thursday Night Football, there’s never been a season as highly watched as this year, at least according to Amazon’s Prime Video.

As Prime prepares to close out its Thursday Night Football season with a Christmas night game between the Denver Broncos and Kansas City Chiefs later this week, the streaming service is already taking a victory lap. After securing 15.36 million viewers for last week’s thrilling game between the Los Angeles Rams and Seattle Seahawks, Prime Video is averaging 14.96 million viewers per game this season.

According to the streamer, that’s enough to rank as the most-watched year of Thursday Night Football in history, regardless of network. The next-closest year is 2019, which averaged 13.65 million viewers across Fox, NFL Network, and Prime Video.

Of course, this year’s Thursday Night Football season has the distinct advantage of being measured with Nielsen’s new Big Data + Panel methodology, along with expanded out-of-home viewing measurements implemented in early 2025. Both changes have increased audiences for live sports compared to prior years.

Prime Video also has the distinct advantage of airing each game on the same platform, rather than prior seasons, where the Thursday package had been split between a broadcast partner and the NFL Network cable channel. NFL Network games, in particular, generally generated smaller audiences, bringing the season-long average down.

Regardless, Thursday Night Football has clearly remained on a positive trajectory ever since making the full-time switch to Prime Video in 2022. The streamer has seen double-digit year-over-year viewership growth in each season since its debut campaign, which averaged just 9.58 million viewers per game. That low-end starting point helped Prime Video score more dramatic year-over-year growth, but now, all things being equal, the total audience is comparable, perhaps even a smidge higher, than the series was earning on linear television.

Streaming has seemingly become second nature for football fans. No doubt, the league looks at these numbers and is encouraged that a further shift of its game inventory from traditional television to streaming may not result in a severe viewership drop as it once did.

And for Amazon, the steady growth means its investment has paid off. Should the streamer continue on such a dramatic growth trajectory, it’s not out of the question for Prime Video to be in the running for a Super Bowl in the not-so-distant future.