Amazon Scores Exclusive NFL Playoff Game for Next Season

Alex Weprin
·1-min read

Amazon is taking its relationship with the NFL to the next level.

Amazon’s Prime Video service will stream an NFL wild card playoff game next season, giving the streaming platform its biggest live sporting event yet, a source familiar with the deal confirms to The Hollywood Reporter.

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The game is the same game that streamed on NBCUniversal’s Peacock streaming service last month, garnering 23 million viewers. A source says that Amazon earned the right to secure the game thanks to a performance trigger in its deal with the league.

Amazon has become of the NFL’s main partners, with the Thursday Night Football package up significantly (+24 percent) this past season compared to the one a year earlier. Amazon also debuted a Black Friday game, in a first for the league.

Still, an NFL playoff game is a major step up for the tech giant, and one that will further test the reach and scale of Prime Video. The platform has proven technically capable, though a wild card game, with its make or break stakes, is well-positioned to smash streaming ratings records, just as the Peacock game did for NBCU.

That game, however, benefited from another game on NBC that served as a lead-in (with ample promotion for Peacock), as well as the attendance of Taylor Swift, who was there to cheer on beau Travis Kelce.

Of course, Prime Video is much more widely accessible than Peacock, and consumers have by now become used to the platform hosting exclusive NFL games. Presumably the games will also be available on broadcast TV in the local markets of the teams playing.

The Wall Street Journal first reported on the Amazon wild card game.

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