Media

Amazon Shatters Previous Ratings High for 1st NFL Game

Nielsen’s new audience measurement has already delivered substantial viewership boosts in the NFL, a trend now furthered impactfully by Amazon.

By Eric Fisher

Sep 15, 2025 | 03:11 pm

UPDATED Sep 15, 2025 | 03:53 pm

Green Bay Packers cornerback Keisean Nixon (25) breaks up a pass intended for Washington Commanders wide receiver Noah Brown (85) on Thursday, September 11, 2025, at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wis. The Packers won the game, 27-18.

Tork Mason/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin

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As the last entity with weekly NFL rights to report a 2025 viewership figure, Amazon arrived with arguably the most impactful result yet from Nielsen’s new audience measurement process.

The streaming and online retail giant said Monday that its Commanders-Packers game on Sept. 11, the season debut of Thursday Night Football, averaged 17.76 million viewers. That figure is the best regular-season total for Amazon since it began exclusive TNF coverage in 2022.

While most other NFL rights holders are off to strong, if not historic, starts to the new season, including CBS and Fox, NBC, and ESPN, none have experienced the singular impact that Amazon did in that opening game. The audience from the Commanders-Packers game beat last year’s full-season TNF average of 13.2 million by 35%, and topped its prior best-ever game, a December 2024 matchup of the Packers and Lions that drew an average of 17.3 million, by nearly 3%. The only contest more viewed in Amazon’s NFL history was an exclusive wild-card playoff game last season that averaged 22.1 million.

Amazon also said it beat the Week 1 viewership generated by other, linear-based NFL rights holders among viewers ages 18–34 and 18–49. That further manifested in an average Amazon viewer age of 46.9, eight years younger than the NFL’s linear Week 1 average.

The Commanders-Packers TNF total also beat last year’s season opener, a game between the Bills and Dolphins, by 19%. That Miami-Buffalo rivalry will be revived Thursday for Amazon’s second TNF game of the season.

As with the other networks, much of the Amazon viewership boost derives from Nielsen’s new Big Data + Panel audience measurement process.

That methodology, bringing in millions of additional data points from set-top boxes and smart TVs, is designed to provide a fuller view of audience behaviors and capture more of the content consumption that is already occurring. Nielsen’s current policy, for all networks and all programming, is for current measurements with the new Big Data + Panel process to be compared against panel-only tabulations from prior years.