Ratings predictions for Amazon’s Thursday Night Football debut and more. What is a realistic viewership expectation for the first Nielsen-rated NFL game ever on a streaming service, and how much do the numbers matter in year one of an 11-year deal? Plus, predictions for the rest of NFL Week 2 and a handful of other sporting events.
How will Amazon’s Thursday Night Football debut fare in the ratings?
The debut of Thursday Night Football is a seminal moment in sports TV history, a description that sounds grandiose but is nonetheless true. Sporting events air on streaming services all the time, and NFL games have aired exclusively on streaming services (and Amazon Prime), but Thursday is the beginning of a $1.1 billion/year media rights deal in which the stakes are far higher. This is no CBS or Fox Sports-produced Saturday afternoon one-off for which there will be limited data after the fact (if any). This is a Nielsen-rated Amazon original with its own music, announcers and a weekly primetime slot.
As has been reported, Amazon is guaranteeing advertisers 12.5 million viewers per game for its Thursday night schedule. Amazon’s previous regular season game, in Week 16 two years ago, is said to have averaged 4.8 million (that estimate not coming from Nielsen). More recently, Amazon’s preseason game last month — which admittedly had little promotion and faced head-to-head competition on NFL Network — averaged just half a million viewers for the national livestream (local over-the-air simulcasts on the home markets attracted about the same number of viewers).
It is hard to imagine Amazon will go from that level of performance to averaging three-quarters of last year’s Thursday Night Football audience (16.4 million). For a more realistic expectation of how Amazon will fare, perhaps one should look at the original Thursday night broadcaster.
When Thursday Night Football debuted on NFL Network in 2006, that too was a milestone in sports television. Games had aired on league-owned networks before — even NBA playoff games had aired on NBA TV by that point — but the NFL putting an entire primetime package on its own channel (if just for eight late season games) was a notable escalation. The first game aired on Thanksgiving night and averaged 4.16 million viewers, the kind of number one simply does not see for primetime NFL games today, or even back then. It drew 2.38 million the next week, then 2.59 million, 4.14 million (Cowboys), 2.97 million, 2.36 million and 3.32 million. No other NFL game that year had fewer than 8.99 million.
The early struggles did not deter the NFL from putting games on NFL Network, and the channel’s schedule expanded until it reached 15 games seven years later. This season, NFL Network’s presence will be its lowest yet (seven games) because Amazon has taken exclusive hold of the Thursday package. Still, the NFL Network experience provides a reasonable guide for what Amazon is likely to experience. Viewership will probably be unusually low to start, perhaps lower than anyone has seen for a primetime NFL game in some time. Nonetheless, this is an 11-year deal and there is no reason to believe the NFL will be deterred by the numbers in year one.
NFL Thursday Night Football: Chargers-Chiefs (8:15p Thu Amazon Prime). Prediction: 6.3 million viewers (not including OTA simulcasts).
As for the rest of week two…
The NFL’s TV partners were surely not pleased when Cowboys QB Dak Prescott went down to injury in game one of the season. The injury takes some luster from Sunday’s clash between “America’s team” and the defending AFC champions, which would have pit Prescott against Joe Burrow in a battle of star quarterbacks. Expect ratings to dip from Week 2 last year, when Dallas faced the Chargers in most markets (12.6, ~24M)
NFL: mostly Bengals-Cowboys (4:25p Sun CBS). Prediction: 11.9, 22.7M.
NBC gets Justin Fields and the Bears against Aaron Rodgers and the Packers in a rivalry game that always seems to draw well. With both Chicago and Green Bay coming off of notable week one performances — if in opposite directions — this game looks more intriguing than it has in recent years when the Bears have struggled. The quarterback matchup figures to draw some extra eyeballs as well. In Week 2 last year, NBC drew a 10.8 and just shy of 20 million for Chiefs-Ravens.
NFL: Bears-Packers (8:20p Sun NBC). Prediction: 11.6, 21.9M.
Monday Night Football began the Joe Buck/Troy Aikman era with its largest Week 1 audience in 22 years. That was less a function of the new broadcast team than of a storyline that saw former Seahawks QB Russell Wilson return to Seattle for his first game as an opponent. Those conditions will not be repeated this week. Instead, the Buck-Aikman broadcast faces an unusual headwind — direct competition from a Monday night game on another network.
There have been a number of makeshift Monday night doubleheaders the past two years due to scheduling chaos, but the league has been sure to protect the “MNF” window from national competition. The last time there were overlapping Monday night games on national TV was Week 1 in 2005, when Hurricane Katrina forced the Saints to move their Sunday opener in New Orleans to a Monday night in New York. Giants-Saints began at 7 PM and the regularly scheduled Washington-Dallas game at 8:30. The difference between then and now is that ABC aired both games — simulcasting the first half of Giants-Saints with ESPN and then airing Washington-Dallas in full thereafter (Giants-Saints finished on ESPN). The late game did not suffer much in the ratings, but that is largely because it had the early game as a lead-in to mitigate the cannibalization.
No such luck this week, as Titans-Bills airs solely on ESPN and Vikings-Eagles solely on ABC (the first solo NFL game on the network since Super Bowl 40). Expect both games to draw a bit less than they would have under normal circumstances.
NFL: Bills-Titans (7p Mon ESPN). Prediction: 5.0, 9.21M.
NFL: Vikings-Eagles (8:30p Mon ABC). Prediction: 7.5, 13.92M.
Additional predictions
WNBA Finals Game 3: Las Vegas-Connecticut (9p Thu ESPN). For the second time in three games, the WNBA Finals airs opposite the NFL. As far as NFL competition goes, a game on Amazon Prime is far easier to contend with than the usual slate of Sunday games on CBS and FOX. Nonetheless, expect viewership for the potential clinching Game 3 to dip from Game 2 on Tuesday (649K). Prediction: 600K.
CFB: #6 Oklahoma-Nebraska (Noon Sat FOX). After a big start for Alabama-Texas, FOX “Big Noon Saturday” returns with another soon-to-be-SEC team as Oklahoma faces Nebraska. If Nebraska can give Oklahoma the kind of fight Texas gave Alabama last week, FOX could get a solid number — if nothing on the level of last week’s ten million. The Sooners are favored by ten. Prediction: 4.53M.
MLB: Pirates-Mets or A’s Astros (7:15p Thu FOX): Former Thursday Night Football home FOX goes head-to-head with the Amazon debut of TNF with regional Major League Baseball. The network actually did the same thing three years ago when it held TNF rights, airing MLB in two weeks when the TNF game was exclusive to NFL Network. The numbers were healthy enough, 1.75 million the first week and an impressive 2.59 million the second. Given the trajectory in ratings since then, do not expect as big an audience this time around. Prediction: 1.24M.
Previous predictions:
— NFL: Buccaneers-Cowboys. Prediction: 12.4 rating, 23.6M viewers; result: 12.3, 23.3M.
— NFL: mostly Packers-Vikings. Prediction: 9.7, 17.3M; result: 9.2, 18.5M.
— NFL: mostly Chiefs-Cardinals. Prediction: 9.0, 16.6M; result: 8.3, 16.6M.
— NFL: Broncos-Seahawks. Prediction: 8.9, 17.6M; result: 11.1, 19.8M.
— US Open men’s final: Alcaraz-Rudd. Prediction: 1.85M viewers; result: 2.15M.
— WNBA Finals Game 1: Sun-Aces. Prediction: 463K; result: 555K.
