Amazon lands the NFL Thursday Night football streaming video package

Today Amazon has landed the rights to NFL Football Thursday Night as the exclusive streaming partner. They paid the NFL a reported $50 million dollars for the 10 games which according to Forbes, is $40 million more than Twitter did for the rights last season.

According to the NFL the deal with Amazon Prime, gives the giant the live OTT digital stream of Thursday Night Football to a global audience across devices during the 2017 NFL Season. The deal is part of a “Tri-cast,” with the games also airing the 10 Thursday night games on CBS, NBC and the NFL Network.

That gives the league coverage on broadcast, cable and streaming video for all of the Thursday night NFL telecasts.

According to Amazon Prime will offer the games to their worldwide, audience, on the Amazon Prime Video app for TVs, game consoles, set top boxes and connected devices, in over 200 countries.

“We are continually looking for ways to deliver our games to fans wherever they watch, whether on television or on digital platforms and we are thrilled to bring Thursday Night Football to Amazon”, said Brian Rolapp, Chief Media and Business Officer for the NFL.  “As has been the case with all our streaming initiatives, we look forward to continuing to innovate with our partners as we learn the best ways to serve our fans both this season and into the future.”

 

“Our focus is on bringing customers the best premium video programming, when and how they want to watch it.  Streaming Thursday Night Football on Prime Video is a great step for us toward that vision, and offers tremendous new value for Prime members around the world,” said Jeff Blackburn, Senior Vice President, Business Development & Entertainment, Amazon. “And we’re thrilled to extend our ongoing content relationship with the NFL – the gold standard for sports entertainment – on behalf of our Prime customers.”

The NFL and Amazon Prime already are partners on programming in a deal in creating the original program All or Nothing. The show, is about to start its second season and is produced for Amazon by NFL Films.

 On background from the NFL Network.

In February of 2016, the NFL announced that both CBS and NBC will broadcast five Thursday Night Football games, growing the package to 10 broadcast games in 2016 and 2017 from eight in 2014 and 2015. All Thursday Night Football broadcast games in 2017 will continue to be simulcast on NFL Network. NFL Network will also exclusively televise an eight-game schedule of regular season games comprised of Thursday Night Football, late-season games.

Quotes used in this story came from NFL Network.

 

 

Jim Williams is the Washington Bureau Chief, Digital Director as well as the Director of Special Projects for Genesis Communications. He is starting his third year as part of the team. This is Williams 40th year in the media business, and in that time he has served in a number of capacities. He is a seven time Emmy Award winning television producer, director, writer and executive. He has developed four regional sports networks, directed over 2,000 live sporting events including basketball, football, baseball hockey, soccer and even polo to name a few sports. Major events include three Olympic Games, two World Cups, two World Series, six NBA Playoffs, four Stanley Cup Playoffs, four NCAA Men’s National Basketball Championship Tournaments (March Madness), two Super Bowl and over a dozen college bowl games. On the entertainment side Williams was involved s and directed over 500 concerts for Showtime, Pay Per View and MTV Networks.