Cory Gunther
This week the National Football League confirmed that starting in the 2022-2023 season Thursday Night Football will air exclusively on Amazon Prime Video, a year earlier than expected. We knew this was coming and didn’t expect it until 2023, but Fox canceled its contract a year early.
If you love Football and also use Amazon Prime, you’re in luck, as they’ll be the exclusive provider streaming TNF games for the next 11 years. The two companies previously inked a ten-year deal to make the streaming service the only place you can watch Thursday Night Football, starting in 2023. And now, that’ll be 11 years, starting with the 2022-2023 season.
For those wondering, the average annual rights fee to show NFL games is roughly $1.2 Billion, so Amazon is putting up big money here.
Additionally, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen Amazon host NFL Football games, either. In fact, Amazon began hosting digital streams of Thursday Night Football back in 2017, while NBC and CBS still managed over-the-air and cable showings. Now, they’ll handle just about everything during the mid-week game.
It’s important to note that while Amazon is the “exclusive” provider of TNF games, local markets will still have rights to show games, too. Meaning you’ll still be able to watch Thursday games over the air in your local market broadcast.
This is just one of several big changes in the TV landscape lately. Things continue to change as streaming takes over. Either way, the NFL is one of the biggest draws for TV, meaning Amazon just scored big.
via WSJ
