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Retail technology giant Amazon has renewed its ‘Thursday Night NFL’ streaming rights contract for a further two seasons, at a cost of $130 million.
The NFL’s governance has confirmed that Amazon Prime Video will continue to be its lead streaming OTT platform service for Thursday night games.
The deal sees Amazon secure 11 Thursday night NFL matches, which will be broadcast and co-produced by FOX Sports.
Through its Prime Video service, Amazon details that the NFL content will be made available to the over 100 million Amazon Prime members worldwide in over 200 countries/territories.
Amazon renews its NFL OTT contract, following a successful first year of streaming Thursday night matches. In 2017, the retail giant took over the streaming contract from Twitter, who ‘failed to find an audience’ for its NFL content.
“Our customers love to stream football — last year, we successfully debuted NFL Thursday Night Football on Prime Video in the U.S. and around the world,” said Jeff Blackburn, Senior Vice President of Entertainment at Amazon.
“We’re thrilled to continue our relationship with the NFL and offer Prime members another two seasons of Thursday Night Football.”
Despite Amazon’s renewal as streaming partner, NFL concerns remain regarding the league’s drop in live game viewership recorded during season 2017/18.
The NFL’s 2017/18 regular season broadcasts, recorded a network-wide 9.7% decline in audiences. Adding further concerns for lead NFL broadcasters; NBC, ESPN and FOX Sports, ‘Sunday Night Football’ games failed to break the target 20 million viewership mark, which saw broadcasters compensate advertisers for the audience shortfall.
