Thursday Night Football scored another massive increase over last year, though the bar was not particularly high this week.
The latest edition of NFL Thursday Night Football (Rams-49ers) averaged 12.29 million viewers on Amazon Prime Video, up 54% from Chargers-Raiders last year (7.98M) and the third-straight game on Prime to increase by at least 40 percent. The two prior telecasts, Packers-Lions last week and Raiders-Chiefs on Black Friday, increased 61 and 41 percent respectively.
Some of this week’s growth is due to the unusually low bar set last year, when the Raiders won in a laugher that averaged the smallest TNF audience of the past two years.
The Rams’ competitive win, which peaked with 13.33 million in the 9:15 PM ET quarter-hour, was the 11th window on Prime Video this season to average at least 12 million viewers. That compares to six all of last season.
Not including the Black Friday game, which is not part of the TNF package, TNF is now averaging 13.51 million viewers this season — up 12% from the same point last year (12.10M) and the highest average at this point of the season since the series last aired on broadcast television in 2021 (13.68M).
The series is averaging 2.71 million among viewers under 35 and 6.19 million among viewers under 50, both up 10% from 2.47 and 5.63 million respectively at the same point last year. With viewership up by more overall than in the young demographics, it may go without saying that this year’s median age of 49 is slightly older than the same point last year (48). Nonetheless, TNF continues to attract a younger audience than the linear NFL broadcasters (55) and the rest of primetime television (63).
