The Thursday Night Football audience is getting slightly older, watching slightly less, but growing double-digits every week.
The latest edition of NFL Thursday Night Football (Titans-Steelers) averaged a 5.5 rating and 11.52 million viewers on Amazon Prime Video, up 48% in ratings and 47% in viewership from Eagles-Texans last year, which aired opposite a World Series game featuring the same two markets (3.7, 7.86M).
All eight Thursday Night Football games this season have posted a double-digit increase in viewership, with five of the eight games up by more than 20 percent.
Seven of eight games have averaged at least 11 million viewers, compared to three games all of last season.
TNF is now averaging 12.52 million viewers this season, up 25% from the first eight games last year (10.01M). Viewership is up a more modest 18% in adults 18-49 (to 6.00M) and 14% in 18-34 (to 2.65M), resulting in a slightly higher median age (48) than the same period last year (46).
Amazon’s median age still remains lower than that of the other NFL broadcasters (55). In addition, the slightly older audience is as much as anything a function of younger viewers watching less television. While Thursday’s rating in adults 18-49 increased 28% from last year (from 3.18 to 4.06), the corresponding share increased 58 percent (from 24 to 38).
Amazon viewers are also watching less of the games at this point of the season than last year, with the average viewer watching 84 minutes per telecast — down from 86 minutes at the same point a year ago. That is still ten minutes more than the other NFL broadcasters.
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. Using that measure, Thursday’s game averaged 12.60 million viewers and TNF is averaging 13.61 million for the season.
(Nielsen estimates from Amazon Prime PR, Programming Insider 11.4)
