Previewing a rare first in NFL broadcasting, the debut of the league’s new Black Friday game on Amazon Prime Video: How to watch, ratings predictions and more.
How to watch Jets-Dolphins Black Friday game on Amazon
Date: Friday, November 24
Times: 3:00 PM ET
Networks: Amazon Prime Video (national), FOX5 (New York), CBS4 (Miami)
Streaming options: Amazon Prime Video and NFL+. (If you purchase a subscription, this site may receive a commission.)
The full NFL schedule is available here.
Backstory and analysis
There was once a time when NFL games were Sunday afternoons, Monday nights and that was it (save for Thanksgiving and the occasional Saturday). Today, there are games on Sunday afternoons, nights and even the occasional morning; Mondays, Thursdays and (still) the occasional Saturday; Thanksgiving, Christmas and now Black Friday. Any fear of overexposure has been blunted by the fact that viewership just keeps rising (though there were some concerns during the ‘great NFL ratings panic’ of 2017).
If there was any chance of the NFL scaling back its intentions to conquer every day of the week and every holiday on the calendar, that was likely snuffed out when a 2020 Ravens-Steelers game — originally scheduled for Thanksgiving night but postponed multiple times — averaged over ten million viewers on a non-holiday Wednesday afternoon. There is no bigger green light than knowing you can pull an audience of ten million viewers in the middle of a nondescript workday.
Nevertheless, the NFL was “lukewarm” when Amazon pitched it on carrying a Black Friday game, per reports at the time. The league’s antitrust exemption requires that it avoid college football Saturdays and high school football Fridays, meaning that primetime was not an option. Black Friday is not necessarily associated with big sports audiences, as there are always a wide variety of games but few of them are particularly compelling on paper. There have been a number of exceptions, including a United States-England World Cup match last year, but Black Friday sporting events have largely been for the junkies and the bored. The kind of mass audience that usually sustains big NFL games might not be available on a day that is devoted to shopping and less so to family gatherings in front of the TV.
For Thursday Night Football broadcaster Amazon, Black Friday is the biggest day of the year. Amazon may be growing its sports broadcasting apparatus, but its ‘day job’ (so-to-speak) is selling people things. The more people Amazon can lure to its properties on Black Friday, the better, and there is no better lure in media than the NFL. Amazon was able to help the NFL overcome any hesitancy by paying $100 million for the rights and now there is a new NFL Thanksgiving weekend tradition.
The first of the Black Friday games looked a lot better on paper at the start of the season than now, owing to Aaron Rodgers’ season-opening Achilles injury. While Rodgers continues to push toward returning this season, his comeback will not happen in time to make the Jets offense watchable Friday. While the Dolphins are an elite team, the potential exists for the game to become another lopsided snoozer akin to the Jets’ 26-point, nationally-televised loss to the Bills on Sunday. Say what one will about the NFL’s recent ratings success, but even “the shield” is not immune to blowouts.
Ratings prediction
So far this season, Thursday Night Football games have averaged 12.3 million viewers. There are good reasons to expect lower numbers for the Black Friday game: the matchup, the afternoon timeslot, and even the competition — college football owned Black Friday long before the NFL did and there will be competing games on ABC and CBS. Even so, the NFL is the NFL. One should assume the numbers will be good until shown otherwise.
NFL: Jets-Dolphins (3p Fri Amazon Prime Video). Prediction: 14.10M viewers.
Most-watched NFL games on Amazon Prime
#1: 2023 Week 2, Vikings-Eagles: 15.05 million viewers
#2: 2023 Week 3, Giants-49ers: 13.92M
#3: 2023 Week 6, Broncos-Chiefs: 13.83M
#4: 2023 Week 4, Lions-Packers: 13.48M
#5: 2022 Week 2, Chargers-Chiefs: 13.03M
