Thursday Night Football viewership continues to surge over last year, with the Chiefs’ win over the Broncos posting the biggest jump yet.
The latest edition of NFL Thursday Night Football (Broncos-Chiefs) averaged a 6.4 rating and 13.83 million viewers on Amazon Prime Video, up a season-high 47% in ratings and 57% in viewership from Washington-Chicago last year (4.3, 8.79M).
The Chiefs’ win, which peaked with 15.51 million from 9:15-9:30 PM ET, delivered the third-largest TNF audience since the series moved to Amazon Prime last year, trailing only Vikings-Eagles in Week 2 (15.05M) and Giants-49ers in Week 3 (13.92M). Just five telecasts in, this season already accounts for the four largest TNF audiences in the Amazon era.
TNF is now averaging 13.6 million viewers for the season, up 26% from last year (10.80M) and up 23% from 2021 (11.03M). At this point of the 2021 season, three TNF games had aired exclusively on NFL Network and two were simulcast on FOX.
As has been usual in the Amazon era, TNF continues to average a disproportionately large younger audience. Broncos-Chiefs averaged a 4.0 rating in adults 18-34, comfortably topping Monday Night Football on ABC, ESPN and ESPN2 three nights earlier (3.3) despite averaging three million fewer viewers overall. Ratings in each of the key adult demographics — 18-34, 18-49 (4.9) and 25-54 (5.6) — increased 52% over Week 6 last year.
With the Chiefs again attracting unusual off-the-field attention, TNF saw a 15% increase in female viewership compared to the first four weeks this season (from 4.29 to 4.92M), with the demographic accounting for 36% of the audience — up from 32%. In particular, viewership increased 29% among women 18-24 (from 234K to 303K) and 19% among girls 12-17 (from 100K to 120K). The combined audience among women and girls 12-24 was a season-high 423,000, up 4% from the previous high of 405,000 for Vikings-Eagles.
Keep in mind that Nielsen is not including Amazon’s internal “first party” data in its viewership estimates for TNF, as was originally planned. Those figures are included in a separate “Integrated Live Streaming Report” that has yet to be accredited by the Media Ratings Council. Under that measure, Thursday’s game averaged 14.9 million viewers and TNF is averaging 15.0 million for the season.
(Some data from Amazon PR)
