The viewership trends associated with Nielsen’s updated methodology continue to manifest in record-setting numbers, and Amazon’s Prime Video is the latest beneficiary.
The season debut of Thursday Night Football featuring the Washington Commanders and Green Bay Packers averaged 17.76 million viewers last week, marking the most-watched regular season game on Prime Video since the streamer debuted the package in 2022. Viewership for Thursday’s game exceeded the previous record, 17.29 million viewers for a December contest between the Packers and Lions last season.
Compared to last year’s Thursday Night Football season opener, the Packers’ win jumped 19% versus the Buffalo Bills and Miami Dolphins a year ago (14.96 million viewers).
Of course, all of these records must be viewed in the context of Nielsen’s new Big Data + Panel methodology, which includes data gathered from 75 million connected devices across the country, in addition to the more than 40,000 television households that comprise Nielsen’s standard panel. Those changes, along with an expansion to its out-of-home viewing measurements made in February, have served to supersize live sports ratings the first few weeks of football season, and muddy comparisons to previous years.
Amazon continues to excel in attracting young people to its broadcasts. Per Prime Video PR, Thursday’s game attracted the largest audiences in the 18-34 and 18-49 age demos of all season-opening NFL games on linear television. Prime Video secured 8.8 million viewers in the 18-49 cohort, up 18% versus last year’s Thursday Night Football opener. The median age for Thursday’s game clocked in at 46.9, a full eight years younger than the median viewer for the NFL’s opening week on linear (55).
Detractors will be quick to point out that the lower median age is partly a result of fewer older viewers making the transition from linear viewing to streaming, which is true. However, given that more young people watched Thursday Night Football than any linear game of opening week, there seems to also be truth in Amazon’s suggestion that its broadcasts bring in more young viewers than linear.
Regardless of how muddled year-by-year comparisons have become, drawing more young people into your broadcasts than the competition is always an attractive thing for advertisers. And every year, Amazon seems to be getting better in that department.
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.