Thursday Night Football (TNF), the most popular primetime broadcast, is exclusively available on Amazon Prime Video for the first time. The NFL and Amazon recently signed an 11-year deal to broadcast 15 Thursday Night Football games and one preseason game in the United States. Amazon is paying $1 billion yearly to stream NFL games outside local broadcast networks exclusively.
This means advertisers can reach Prime members through their TVs, mobile devices, and desktops using Fire TV, Prime Video, Amazon, and Twitch as they tune into TNF.
NFL viewership is up 17% from last season as the sport’s popularity continues to grow as the most popular sport in the United States.
On the season opener, TNF was the #1 most-watched program of the day for all age groups and #1 of the week for 18-34 yr old. Amazon’s debut broadcast of “Thursday Night Football” resulted in a record number of new Prime signups for a three-hour period. Viewership of TNF continues to grow week-over-week as football fans will go to whatever lengths they have to in order to tune in.
Compared to traditional linear NFL viewers, Amazon TNF viewers skew younger. 63% of Amazon TNF viewers fall under the adult GenZ and Millennial audience, over-indexing 140 in relation to linear NFL viewers. On average, Amazon TNF viewers self-report to be 7 years younger than linear NFL viewers.
According to estimates, 11.8 million individuals tuned in to Prime Video to watch the match, while 1.2 million individuals tuned in via over-the-air TV in Los Angeles and Kansas City local markets.
Regarding the streaming experience, Thursday Night Football provides a highly engaging, sports-centric live broadcast that sports fans love and advertisers value as a vehicle for driving brand awareness and affinity. Amazon helps brands create compelling experiences by offering unique viewing experiences such as Next Gen Stats, multiple audio options, and live chat on Twitch.
Thursday Night Football viewing is predominantly taking place in the living room. Brands that appear in the immersive and high-quality viewing experience will likely impact viewers’ brand perceptions and behavior.
Now that we have a perspective on how large the audience is that tunes into TNF, let’s dive in deeper to learn more about the audience.
Younger viewers continue to flock to the online giant for TNF games. The Thursday audience had a median age of 46, seven years younger than the viewers on the NFL’s linear TV partners. TNF has drawn 2.8 million viewers for the 18-34 demographic through three games, 11% more than other NFL broadcasters.
Amazon TNF viewers are an active and affluent audience with high purchase propensity. These audiences self-report having a 36% higher household income than linear NFL viewers. In a study by Kantar, TNF viewers reported a higher level of brand engagement during the game than linear viewers (87% vs. 65%, respectively).
The study also shows that 41% of TNF viewers will search for products, 32% will research a brand’s website, and 34% will made a purchase.
Amongst all Amazon consumers, fans of TNF were more inclined to buy items from Home Improvement (such as appliance parts and accessories, plumbing fixtures, electrical and heating items), Sports-related Merchandise (such as team sports items, cycling athletic sportswear), Toys (such as outdoor and sports toys, games, crafts, and groceries), and Pet Products ((pet food, pet toys, and pet supplies, for example).
The Thursday Night Football audience has a higher purchase propensity of key product categories on Amazon – making them highly relevant for CPG, toy, and household brands.
TNF on Prime Video in 2022 will continue to attract a big audience of NFL fans who love the game. Those who migrated from linear TV to Prime Video to watch NFL games will continue to do so, and those who seek other content will be harder to reach through traditional NFL broadcasts.
According to an independent study, Prime Video and Twitch viewers could generate an extra +13% reach than NFL audiences who watch linear broadcasts, as well as an extra +8% reach to those who watch other linear sports.
Amazon DSP allows advertisers to reach these audiences through its Display network and Streaming TV ads. Your content will appear before or in the middle of Amazon streaming content like Freevee, Amazon Publisher Services broadcaster and network apps, live sports (Like TNF), Twitch, and the News app on Fire TV.
The TNF audience is highly niche, technically inclined, young, engaged on social media, and multi-tasking while streaming. This audience will tune in each Thursday night for games allowing brands to strengthen their relationship with this audience.
Savvy advertisers will leverage Amazon’s data to create multi-channel immersive experiences that will help to create memorable experiences between viewers and brands. As consumer behavior evolves to technology, our ability to hyper-target age and demographic profiles will help fuel upper-funnel advertising tactics more effectively.
Sources:
- https://advertising.amazon.com/blog/prime-video-football-streaming-audiences-vs-linear-tv?ref_=a20m_us_tnf_blg_strmwp
- https://frontofficesports.com/amazon-thursday-night-football-viewership/
- https://www.si.com/extra-mustard/2022/09/22/thursday-night-football-amazon-prime-ratings
- https://www.cnbc.com/2022/09/20/amazon-thursday-night-football-nfl-stream-draws-record-prime-signups.html
- https://advertising.amazon.com/blog/thursday-night-football-on-prime-video/?ref_=a20m_us_search_title
- https://advertising.amazon.com/blog/new-era-of-thursday-night-football
- https://advertising.amazon.com/thursday-night-football/?ref_=a20m_us_search_title
- https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/32349578/nfl-tv-viewership-17-last-season
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