Amazon Prime Video will continue to stream an NFL Wild Card playoff game for as long as it owns rights to the league.
The NFL granted Amazon rights to a Wild Card game each season for the life of its media rights deal, which is set to expire in 2032 unless the league opts out, Austin Karp of Sports Business Journal reported Thursday. (SBJ previously reported that the Amazon deal would last for two additional seasons before updating late Thursday.)
It is not clear whether the deal Amazon struck with the NFL last season was always supposed to line up with its broader Thursday Night Football contract. When originally reported last year, the deal was believed to be for one season.
Prime Video carried the Steelers-Ravens Wild Card Game in January, averaging more than 22 million viewers (including local over-the-air simulcasts in the participating markets) — a figure that trailed the prior year’s Wild Card Game on Peacock and the two Christmas Day NFL games on Netflix. It should be noted that the Prime game still delivered the highest household rating ever for an NFL game on a streaming service, surpassing the Peacock and Netflix games.
The Amazon deal would seem to shut out Peacock — or potentially Netflix if it were inclined to bid — from carrying a Wild Card game for the remainder of the NFL’s current media rights deals. Between Amazon and the four over-the-air broadcasters, five of six Wild Card slots are locked up each year. The sixth game rotates between NBC, CBS and possibly FOX. NBC and CBS are contractually owed a second Wild Card Game in most years, and it stands to reason that FOX is as well, though that was never announced. Next season would be a year when FOX would get a second game.
In other NFL scheduling news, the league is expected to announce this week that it will hold a game in Ireland next season. That comes in the wake of an announcement that it plans to hold at least one game in Australia in the 2026 season.
