One week after playing in the two largest NFL audiences recorded by Nielsen, the Cowboys and Lions played in front of another milestone crowd.
The latest edition of NFL “Thursday Night Football” (Cowboys-Lions) averaged 19.39 million viewers on Amazon Prime Video, a figure that includes local over-the-air simulcasts in the home markets — marking the largest “TNF” audience in the Amazon era, and the largest overall since Packers-Cardinals on FOX and NFL Network in the 2021 season.
Keep in mind that Nielsen in February expanded its out-of-home viewership sample to 100 percent of markets and in September shifted to a new “Big Data + Panel” methodology that combines its existing panel with data from smart TVs, set-top boxes, and some providers’ first-party streaming viewership (including Amazon).
Officially, viewership increased 12% from Packers-Lions on the equivalent night last year (17.29M). But that is because it is Nielsen policy to compare “Big Data + Panel” viewing to last year’s panel only numbers. As “Big Data” was tracked and in some cases publicized prior to this year, it is possible to make an apples-to-apples comparison.
Compared to last year’s “Big Data” audience for Packers-Lions, viewership increased five percent from 18.48 million — which would rank as the previous Amazon-era “TNF” record.
The Lions’ win, which peaked with 22.18 million in the 9:15 PM ET quarter-hour, delivered the fifth-largest audience for an NFL game on a streaming platform — trailing only last year’s two Christmas Day games on Netflix and the past two seasons’ streaming-exclusive Wild Card playoff games, one on Prime Video last year and the other on Peacock two years ago.
“TNF” is now averaging 15.20 million viewers for the season, officially up 15% from 13.20 million last year. Compared to last year’s Big Data + Panel average, viewership is up 4% from 14.68 million.
As has been the trend since Amazon began airing “TNF,” the series continues to attract a younger audience than the other NFL broadcasters. Its median age of 49.0 is nearly seven years younger than that of the linear networks (56), the same as at this point last year.
