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In the NFL’s strong early start to 2024 game viewership, Amazon largely held its own in its season debut.
The first Thursday Night Football game this season for the online retail and streaming giant, a 31-10 win for the Bills over the Dolphins, drew an average audience of 14.96 million, according to figures released late Friday. Though down by 1% from the TNF 2023 season debut, this was still the third-most-watched game ever for Amazon, and a peak audience of 18.09 million set a new high for the NFL game slot in its current home on Prime Video.
Though the Buffalo victory was scarcely in doubt by the middle of the second quarter, the game viewership beat Amazon’s 2023 season average of 11.86 million by 26%. The Bills-Dolphins game trails only last year’s opener between the Vikings and Eagles, and a November 2023 contest between the Seahawks and Cowboys in Amazon’s TNF history.
The audience numbers represent Nielsen data from its own ratings panel. Updated figures that include that data plus measurements from set-top boxes, smart TVs, and other streaming platforms, known as “Big Data + Panel” figures, will be released Monday. Beyond raw numbers, though, Amazon also drew an average age of 46.6 years during the Bills-Dolphins game, more than seven years younger than the NFL’s overall Week 1 average of 54.2 million, continuing a key trend seen throughout last season. Prime Video is now in its third season showing TNF.
The TNF viewership follows an opening to the 2024 season for the NFL that saw the league post a 12% lift in average game viewership to a Week 1 record of 21 million. Amazon will continue its NFL coverage with the Week 3 opener on Thursday between the Patriots and Jets.
