It's Early, But Here's How NFL Games Are Doing On Amazon Prime Vs. Twitter

Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN won the rights to live stream NFL's "Thursday Night Football" match-up, while Twitter Inc TWTR was on the losing end of the deal despite having held the rights last year. Now that the NFL season is underway, there are already some early indications of some viewership metrics.

Amazon's live-streaming of the Patriots–Buccaneers game averaged 391,000 viewers, SI commented. This metric includes each user that watched the game for at least 30 seconds on Amazon Prime Video, but the company did say that each viewer watched on average 50 minutes of the Patriots' 19–14 victory over the Bucs.

The average viewership time of 50 minutes does mark a notable increase from Twitter's average during the first game it showed last year by 127 percent, SI added.

On the other hand, Amazon's audience was "dismal," as views are a useless metric, The Drum's Samuel Scott said. Some metrics on viewership of the first Thursday night match (Sept. 28) go as high as 1.9 million people who tuned in to the kickoff show and the game itself, but during game time, the average number of viewers who tuned in for at least 30 seconds dipped to 372,000.

Nevertheless, it is important to keep in mind that the NFL could be a venue for Amazon to market its products and services and the number of views is far from the only metric that matters.

"It's not only about the number of views," he explained. "It's also about the quality of views. Even if Amazon were to obtain a large viewership, it might not necessarily mean that the programming would be useful for marketers.

Related Links:

NFL Demand Still Up Despite Disastrous Start To The Season

Why Did Facebook Make A $600 Million Investment To Stream Indian Cricket?

_________

Image Credit: By Keith Allison [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons