NEW YORK—After a noticeable delay of nearly one week in releasing audience data for Prime Video's first regular season Thursday Night Football game, Amazon's streaming service has finally announced some impressive numbers, with 15.3 million viewers watching the September 15 showdown between the AFC rival Los Angeles Chargers and Kansas City Chiefs.
Those numbers include all available data on every platform from Amazon’s first party measurement metrics and Nielsen data.
Taken alone, Nielsen National TV Ratings showed that Thursday Night Football averaged an impressive 13.0 million total viewers, up +47% from last year’s comparable Week 2 TNF matchup, which aired solely on NFL Network (NYG vs. WSH, 8.84M, including over-the-air). Thursday’s audience on Prime Video peaked from 10:45-10:59 p.m. with 14.6 million viewers as the Chiefs outdueled the Chargers, 27-24.
Perhaps more notably for the future of NFL games on streaming platforms, the game proved to be a big hit among younger viewers, drawing a 4.25 rating in adults 18-34, making it the #1 rated program for the week in that demo and 18% higher than the average A18-34 NFL rating this season.
Thursday Night Football (TNF) on Prime Video also delivered an audience 7 years younger than the linear NFL audience through Week 2 of the 2022 season (46 vs. 53). The audience was 8 years younger than last year’s average TNF audience (54, tri-cast on Fox, NFL Network and Prime Video).
TNF on Prime Video also rated higher than last year’s full-season TNF tri-cast average among A18-34 (+29%, 4.25 vs. 3.3) and A18-49 (+9%, 5.0 vs. 4.6), Amazon reported.
TNF on Prime Video was the most-watched program of the night across broadcast or cable, out-delivering the #2 program by +271% in total viewers (13.0 million vs. 3.5 million for "Young Sheldon" on CBS).
The Nielsen numbers of 13 million viewers were also higher than the 12.5 million Amazon had promised advertisers according to Ad Age.
According to Nielsen local market ratings, the local broadcasts in Los Angeles averaged 602,000 viewers, and 555,000 viewers in Kansas City.
