Just three years in, the NFL continues to grow its Black Friday audience and could be open to expanding its presence on the day.
Last week’s Bears-Eagles Black Friday NFL game averaged 16.33 million viewers on Amazon Prime Video, including local over-the-air simulcasts in the home markets — marking easily the most-watched of the league’s three Black Friday games. Viewership officially increased 21% from Raiders-Chiefs last year (13.51M) and 70% from the inaugural Dolphins-Jets game in 2023 (9.61M). The game was available for free without a subscription to Prime Video.
Nielsen in February expanded its out-of-home viewing sample to 100 percent of markets and in September shifted to a new “Big Data + Panel” methodology that combines the traditional Nielsen panel with data from smart TVs, set-top boxes and in some cases (e.g. Amazon) internal, first-party measurement.
It is official Nielsen policy to compare this year’s “Big Data” figures to last year’s panel-only numbers, but as Amazon tracked and reported its Big Data figures last year, it is possible to make an apples-to-apples comparison. Comparing Big Data to Big Data, viewership still increased 18% from 13.91 million.
The Bears’ win, which peaked with 20.08 million viewers, officially delivered the largest Black Friday sports audience since at least 1991, according to Amazon. The previous high was 15.38 million for the United States-England FIFA World Cup match four years ago. But keep in mind that official Nielsen viewership figures for World Cup soccer include pre-match coverage. On a match-only basis, the 2022 telecast ranks higher with 17.2 million, and that is with less out-of-home viewing and no Big Data.
While Bears-Eagles was obviously the most-watched sporting event of the day, it was not a blowout — as the Texas A&M-Texas college football game on ABC finished not too far behind with 13.0 million.
Prime Video carried the game globally, averaging just 1.06 million viewers outside of the United States, per Amazon’s internal data.
If there was any question whether the NFL is committed to the Black Friday game long term, league commissioner Roger Goodell did not rule out adding a second game on the day when asked by Joe Flint of The Wall Street Journal this week. Goodell said that the league is “going to look at everything” and that he “would expect there will be changes going forward.”
The league added the Black Friday game at the behest of Amazon, which wanted to use the NFL to drive users to its platforms on the biggest shopping day of the year. Because the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 prohibits the NFL from scheduling Friday night and Saturday games during the high school and college football seasons, the Black Friday game airs in a mid-afternoon timeslot — and presumably any second game would have to occupy the early Noon ET window.
