Amazon Plans to Stream NFL Black Friday Game Globally—for Free

NEW YORK — The NFL’s accelerating global ambitions are once again on full display as the league has expanded its Amazon deal to broaden distribution of the upcoming Black Friday game to a worldwide audience.

The Nov. 28 game between the defending champion Eagles and Bears, the third game that Amazon has shown on the unofficial U.S. holiday, will be shown in more than 240 countries and territories, significantly expanding upon the prior plan announced in May. The game will be shown for free without a subscription or a Prime membership required. 

“To be able to take that game and do what we did with both Netflix and YouTube, the [global] audiences speak for themselves,” said NFL EVP Hans Schroeder at NFL fall meetings. “To be able to take a single platform and reach fans all over the world, we’re really excited about it. We think that’s a really great and simple way to bring in new people.”

The effort in particular follows the global distribution on YouTube for the Sept. 5 game from Brazil. That contest, however, fell into an audience measurement controversy as YouTube did not use an accredited Nielsen process to measure the game, and later had to update its count. Amazon, conversely, was an early adopter of Nielsen’s new Big Data + Panel measurement process.

The expanded distribution also feeds directly into an ever-expanding global presence for the NFL, one that will likely include an even larger set of international games next year beyond this year’s record number of seven.

The Black Friday game between the Eagles and Bears will start at 3 p.m. ET, meaning that with the time difference, it will be in prime time across Europe—a vital part of the NFL’s international plans. Black Friday, of course, is not a tradition outside the U.S., as it feeds directly from American Thanksgiving, but the broadcast will nonetheless be a late-season showcase of two of the league’s more popular teams. 

ESPN Deal Proceeds

NFL owners, meanwhile, gave formal approval of the equity transaction with ESPN that was first announced in early August.

The deal is still working through regulatory approvals and hasn’t yet closed, but one of the more notable wrinkles is that the league will gain the ability to redeploy four games per season that had been held by the NFL Network. Along with that, ESPN and the NFL are rethinking prior initiatives such as exclusives on ESPN+ and Monday Night Football doubleheaders, with that latter plan likely on its way out with the forthcoming deal. 

“We never quite got the message right with fans. They never understood,” Schroeder said of the MNF doubleheaders. “And if you look at the numbers, with two games, we were getting a little more than 19 million viewers [on average]. If you do one game on ESPN and ABC, you get a little over 18 million. So you get about the same audience, and it’s less confusing to fans.”