A dramatic ending helped propel Amazon to a massive increase for its Black Friday NFL game.
The second year of Amazon Prime Video’s Black Friday Football game improved dramatically over year one. Friday’s game between the Las Vegas Raiders and Kansas City Chiefs drew an audience of 13.51 million viewers for Amazon, per Prime Video Sports PR citing Nielsen’s panel-only measurement. That figure is up 41% from last year’s Miami Dolphins-New York Jets game (9.61 million viewers).
The streamer also saw comparable increases in the key young demographics advertisers covet. Viewership among persons aged 18-34 increased by 43% year-over-year (2.53 million viewers versus 1.77 million viewers last year). Similarly, viewership for persons aged 18-49 increased by 34% this season (5.72 million viewers versus 4.28 million viewers last year).
According to Jon Lewis of Sports Media Watch, the Chiefs’ last-minute escape peaked at 17.43 million viewers in the 6:00 p.m. ET quarter-hour. Friday’s audience drew a similar number to Amazon’s Thursday Night Football package so far this season, which is averaging 13.25 million viewers per SMW.
While the 41% increase year-over-year is nice for Amazon, the game does not come close to the audiences that tune in on Thanksgiving Day itself. The NFL saw record viewership for the holiday this season, though with the standard Nielsen methodological caveats. It should be noted that the Black Friday NFL game faces much stiffer competition from college football compared to Thursday’s NFL games.
[X/@PrimeSportsPR, Sports Media Watch]
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.