The second season of Amazon Thursday Night Football opened with a viewership high and across-the-board double-digit gains.
Vikings-Eagles averaged a 7.1 rating and 15.05 million viewers on the season premiere of Thursday Night Football on Amazon Prime Video, marking the largest TNF audience ever on the service (16 telecasts). Ratings increased 12% and viewership 16% from Chargers-Chiefs last year, Amazon’s TNF debut and the previous high (6.4, 13.03M).
In addition to the Amazon high, the Eagles’ win ranks as the most-watched season premiere of TNF on any network since 2016 (Jets-Bills: 15.4M) — with the caveat that the opening game aired exclusively on NFL Network from 2017-21.
Figures include local over-the-air simulcasts in both Philadelphia (1.10M) and Minneapolis-St. Paul (656K), meaning that 13.3 million watched through Prime Video.
In addition to the overall gains, ratings increased 15% in adults 18-49 (from 5.1 to 5.8), 17% in 18-34 (from 4.25 to 5.0) and 19% in 25-54 (from 5.7 to 6.7). Following the trend of last season, ratings in 18-34 were disproportionately large compared to the other NFL broadcasters, surpassing all of Sunday’s Week 1 windows in the demo — including the CBS national window that averaged six million more viewers overall.
Keep in mind that Nielsen did not move forward with its plans to incorporate Amazon’s internal data into estimates for TNF, making the year-over-year comparisons apples-to-apples.
So far this season, three of four primetime windows have increased double-digits over last year, the Cowboys’ 40-0 rout of the Giants on Sunday Night Football being the lone exception. By comparison, three of last week’s four Sunday afternoon windows declined double-digits.
As one would expect, Thursday Night Football towered over the non-NFL competition, including a Major League Baseball regional on FOX that averaged a 1.0 and 1.68 million.
