“Thursday Night Football” got off to its most-watched start since moving to Amazon Prime Video, edging the previous week’s Netflix game in the process.
The season premiere of NFL “Thursday Night Football” (Lions-Bills) averaged 18.60 million viewers on Amazon Prime Video last week, up 5% from Packers-Commanders last year (17.76M) and the most-watched season premiere of “TNF” since 2015 — when Broncos-Chiefs averaged 21.12 million on CBS and NFL Network.
Buffalo’s win, which peaked with 21.43 million in the 9:15 PM ET quarter-hour, delivered the third-largest “TNF” audience since the series moved to Prime Video in 2022, behind Broncos-Chiefs on Christmas last year (21.06M) and Cowboys-Lions earlier that month (19.39M).
Note that out-of-home viewing was not included in Nielsen estimates until 2020 or fully accounted for until 2025, that this is only in the second year of a new Nielsen methodology integrating “Big Data” from smart TVs, set-top boxes and first party data with its traditional panel, and that Nielsen has recently introduced a tweak to its measurement to better account for co-viewing of games.
“TNF” averaged slightly more viewers than the 49ers-Rams International Series game from Australia on Netflix the prior Thursday night (18.52M). In the key young adult demographics, Netflix had slightly more viewers in adults 18-34 (4.0 to 3.99 million) and 18-49 (8.78 to 8.68 million), but Amazon came out ahead in 25-54 (9.28 to 9.21).
After a double-digit drop for the Patriots-Seahawks Kickoff Game, the subsequent three primetime NFL windows have each posted a slight increase in viewership over last season — 4% for the season premiere of “Sunday Night Football” on NBC and 5% for the season premiere of “Monday Night Football” on the ESPN family of networks.
(Note that the Nielsen co-viewing enhancement corresponded with a 4% increase in viewership for live events during a pilot test earlier this year, but the impact is expected to be partially blunted by other methodological changes rolled out for the fall season.)
