The Las Vegas Raiders and the Kansas City Chiefs went head-to-head in the NFL’s second annual Black Friday matchup on Prime Video, which was a smashing success for the streamer with 41% growth over last year’s inaugural game.
The game averaged 13.51M viewers Friday, peaking at 17.43M at the top of the 6 p.m. ET hour. While that audience dwarfs in comparison to the behemoth numbers put up by the Thanksgiving games, it’s quite staggering when accounting for the fact that just over 9M tuned in to the Dolphins-Jets game last year.
So far, it seems that Prime Video has delivered in bringing about a new annual pop culture event on the day after Thanksgiving, which is exactly what execs told Deadline was the hope last year when it launched.
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Of course, Amazon already embraces Black Friday so heavily on the retail side, it makes perfect sense that the company would have a live entertainment component over the holiday weekend to drive even more consumers to the platform.
The year-over-year growth for the Black Friday game is likely thanks in part to the Chiefs, which are arguably the NFL’s biggest draw this season after back-to-back Super Bowl wins. The team eked out another win over the Raiders to secure an 11-1 record as they vie for another championship.
However, Prime Video’s NFL viewership has been up across the board this season, marking a third year of substantial growth for the streamer’s pro football slate. Thursday Night Football has consistently outperformed all competing telecasts across broadcast and cable each week.
In the week leading up to the Black Friday showdown, Thursday Night Football‘s Steelers-Browns game drew an even greater audience with 13.72M viewers. There was no comparable game, since that Thursday last year was Thanksgiving Day, but Prime Video did also say it was up 24% over the last time the Steelers and Browns faced off on TNF in 2022 when 11.03M tuned in.
Aside from Friday’s game, there have been seven other matchups to exceed 13M viewers, with several weeks left in the regular season. That’s already blown past the five games that attracted 13M+ viewers in all of 2023. In its inaugural season, only one TNF game managed that type of audience.
As of last week, this season is outpacing the last by 8%, averaging 13.25M. The Black Friday game isn’t included in those numbers, since it is a special presentation and not a regular Thursday Night Football presentation. According to Amazon’s data, TNF is up 38% over the 2022 inaugural season.
As all the streamers race to perfect their live entertainment presentations, pro football in particular has been a big draw, considering it’s just about the only live programming that consistently captivates 10M+ viewers for a single telecast.
Last year, Peacock scored a record-breaking audience for its streaming exclusive AFC Wild Card game, and this year Netflix is also looking to encroach into this territory with its upcoming Christmas Day Texans-Ravens game, featuring a performance from Beyoncé.
Netflix does have a strong subscriber base that could spell huge numbers for the game, but it hasn’t established itself as a go-to platform for pro football the way that Amazon has over these last three years. The Christmas Day games are also a part of the regular season. Those tend to vary greatly in their ability to attract audiences, whereas the playoffs (like Peacock’s Wild Card presentation) stand a much better chance at doing so. None of that may matter though, if they’ve got Beyoncé to draw people in. It will be interesting to see how things shape up.
The post Chiefs-Raiders Secures Victory For Prime Video As Audience Grows 41% Vs. Last Year’s Inaugural Black Friday Matchup appeared first on Deadline.
