Amazon Scores Record With Steelers, Ravens NFL Playoffs Stream: How Game Stacks Up With Other Media, Streamers

Amazon.com Inc AMZN scored big with its first NFL Playoffs exclusive stream, airing the recent Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Ravens matchups during the first week of the postseason.

What Happened: Amazon set a new Prime Video NFL record with an average of 22.07 million viewers during the Steelers and Ravens matchup, which the Ravens won 28-14 and advanced.

The record tops the 17.92 million Amazon's Prime Video had for a regular season game between the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers earlier this season. That match was the most streamed game during the season, before Netflix Inc NFLX set the 2024 NFL streaming record on Christmas Day.

Amazon has the rights to "Thursday Night Football" games and has regularly shared that the NFL games have provided a boost to Prime subscribers and also helped with advertising revenue.

The NFL Playoffs game sets a new bar for Amazon in its sports streams and the NFL partnership, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter. While the viewership was high and the game hit a peak of 24.66 million viewers during the game, the viewership trails several other media companies in their NFL coverage.

This is the second straight year the NFL has featured a NFL Playoffs game exclusive to a streaming platform. Last year, Comcast Corporation CMCSA streamed a NFL Playoffs game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Miami Dolphins on Peacock.

That game had average viewership of 22.86 million, which ranks ahead of Amazon's game this season.

Also ranking ahead of Amazon are both Christmas Day games that streamed on Netflix with average viewership of 24.1 million and 24.3 million.

Why It's Important: Amazon's NFL Playoffs match was also the least watched of the first weekend of games.

Fox Corporation FOX FOXA had average viewership of 35.89 million for the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers game on Fox. Comcast had a viewership of 29 million for the Washington Commanders and Tampa Bay Buccaneers game. These games had viewership down 11% and 19% year-over-year respectively from last year.

CBS, which is a unit of Paramount Global PARA PARAA, had two games over the first weekend with average viewership of 26.6 million for the Los Angeles Chargers and Houston Texans game and average viewership of 31.2 million for the Buffalo Bills and Denver Broncos game. These games saw an increase in viewership compared to last year.

Monday's contents between the Los Angeles Rams and Minnesota Vikings, which aired on Walt Disney Company DIS units ABC, ESPN and ESPN2, had average viewership of 25.34 million, down 13% from last year's opening weekend Monday night game.

Four games will be played in the second weekend of the NFL Playoffs with Disney, Fox, Comcast and Paramount each having one contest.

Amazon's Playoffs game could serve as a continued test of how streaming viewership matches up against broadcast channels. This year's playoffs showed that so far more viewers watched on broadcast than on streaming.

The fact that Amazon's Playoffs game also fell shy of Netflix's Christmas Day viewership for NFL games could also prove costly if the two streaming platforms go head-to-head on sports rights in the future.

Amazon had a successful season of NFL viewership in 2024, with an average of 13.2 million viewers for its "Thursday Night Football" games, up 11% year-over-year, as reported by FrontOfficeSports.

The company also streamed a second annual Black Friday game on Prime Video. When that game is counted into the games, Amazon's 2024 NFL viewership averaged 13.5 million viewers and was up 13% year-over-year.

Amazon has come a long ways from the 9.58 million average viewers it had for "Thursday Night Football" games in 2022.

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