Tom Brady may not be able to pull the Buccaneers out of their slump, but he helped Amazon Prime snap a three-week ratings slide for Thursday Night Football.
The latest edition of NFL Thursday Night Football (Ravens-Buccaneers) averaged 10.01 million viewers on Amazon Prime, marking the most-watched edition of TNF since Dolphins-Bengals in Week 4 (11.72M). Ratings were not immediately available, nor were figures for over-the-air simulcasts in the home market.
Tampa Bay’s third-straight loss snapped a streak of three-straight season-lows for Thursday Night Football, which the prior week averaged just 7.82 million for Saints-Cardinals. It should be noted that unlike the previous week, Ravens-Buccaneers did not face any nationally televised NBA or MLB Postseason games.
Even with the uptick over prior weeks, viewership dropped north of 50% from last year’s equivalent Packers-Cardinals game on FOX and NFL Network (20.26M) — the biggest decline for TNF this season.
As has been the case all season, Thursday Night Football continued to overperform in the younger demographics this week. According to Amazon, adults 18-49 (3.9) accounted for fully half of Thursday’s audience and adults 18-34 (3.1) made up more than one-fifth — compared to 36% and 14% respectively for games on the other NFL broadcasters. Despite pulling a smaller audience overall, TNF had a higher rating in 18-49 and 18-34 this week than the past two editions of ESPN’s Monday Night Football.
TNF is now averaging 10.29 million viewers this season. As has been discussed this week, Amazon has been providing its own “first party” estimate of the TNF audience this season based on its internal data. That figure is 12.0 million.
(Nielsen estimates from Amazon, ShowBuzz Daily 10.28)
