Nielsen and Amazon have reached a landmark deal for measuring the viewership of Thursday Night Football, which begins an unprecedented run next month as a streaming exclusive on Prime Video. Beginn…
Beginning next month, pregame, in-game and postgame elements of the broadcast will count toward the rating, both on Prime Video and Twitch. Over-the-air local TV station carriage in both teams’ local markets — guaranteed under longtime NFL rules — and out-of-home viewing will also be added to the metric, enabling it to be a more robust figure to compare with Sunday and Monday NFL games.
Fox, NBC and CBS shared Thursday night NFL rights before Amazon swooped in to pay $1 billion a year for the exclusive through 2023 after simulcasting games for several years. The tech giant has been making significant investments in live sports, with an eye toward capturing a larger slice of the tens of billions spent each year on TV advertising.
The NFL continues to be the marquee draw, with games and shoulder programming taking up 47 of the top 50 spots in the overall live ratings.