John Middlekauff is predicting that Amazon’s NFL presence won’t stop at Thursday nights.
On his 3 and Out podcast, the former NFL front office executive made the case that Amazon — which has been the exclusive home of Thursday Night Football on Prime Video since 2022 — has the financial resources and the viewer data to justify adding a Sunday package when the NFL next negotiates its media rights.
“Thursday Night Football has taken a huge step up in the world of sports,” Middlekauff said. “It is now appointment viewing. It’s now, from a ratings standpoint, a massive game. The level of games they’re getting is much higher. Amazon is basically a $3 trillion company, and getting more valuable. They clearly enjoy being in business with the NFL. And I think the NFL clearly enjoys being in business with them, because unlike NBC, Fox, CBS, when you’re talking upon billions upon billions of dollars, they don’t have unlimited money. Amazon could buy the entire NFL package, triple it relative to everyone else, and not even blink an eye.”
Amazon pays about $1 billion per year for its Thursday Night Football rights, and the results have given the league every reason to keep investing in the relationship. TNF on Prime Video averaged 15.33 million viewers per game in 2025, which was up 16 percent from the prior season and the most-watched year in the 20-year history of the package across any network, broadcast or cable included. The league has responded accordingly, adding Wild Card playoff rights to Amazon’s package, giving Prime Video Packers-Bears in the Wild Card round last January, and opening the 2026 TNF schedule with Lions-Bills in the first game ever played at the new Highmark Stadium.
What Amazon has built around Thursday Night Football — the ratings growth, the playoff inventory, the pre- and postgame operation — is the foundation for a much larger NFL relationship, and Middlekauff thinks the company has seen enough data from both the NFL and the NBA to know exactly what that relationship is worth.
“I would be stunned, looking at the schedule, if Sunday Night Football, if Amazon isn’t heavily involved, and they’re in a position where they have Thursday Night Football and Sunday Night Football,” Middlekauff said. “I would imagine they’re going to have multiple packages because this business is too lucrative being involved in football and they’ve now had a front-row seat and they’ve had a couple years of data between the two sports they’re involved with. And I’d be stunned if they don’t double down.”
The NFL is widely expected to exercise its 2029 opt-out and seek to double its annual media revenue in the next round of deals, if it doesn’t negotiate even sooner. Netflix just expanded to a five-game package for the 2026 season, with YouTube walking away from a split arrangement and Fox and CBS picking up the leftover inventory. Amazon hasn’t made a move yet on additional inventory, but Sunday Night Football would be a natural expansion if the package were to become available.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.