The last of the NFL rightsholders to post a viewership number from the 2026 season is off to a strong start.
Amazon said Monday that it averaged 18.6 million viewers for its Thursday Night Football season opener between the Lions and Bills. The audience represents a 5% lift from last year’s TNF opener, and ranks third among the most-watched NFL regular-season games on Amazon.
Notably, the game also narrowly topped the 18.5 million U.S. viewership average that Netflix had on Sept. 10 for the 49ers-Rams game from Australia one week earlier.
The game at the Bills’ new Highmark Stadium was momentous on several fronts. The facility is kicking off a league-wide stadium development wave that will extend well into the 2030s; it highlighted the outsized fan passion of the famed Bills Mafia; and the high-profile matchup represented a showcase within Amazon’s improved NFL broadcast schedule.
The audience boost also represented another dose of good news for the NFL, which saw a 13% drop in overall viewership for Week 1 of the 2026 season.
The league’s best television performances so far in the new campaign have been in standalone contests involving marquee teams in traditional primetime windows. NBC Sports saw a 4% audience bump for its Sunday Night Football season premiere on Sept. 14 between the Cowboys and Giants, while ESPN posted its best-ever Week 1 viewership for the Monday Night Football season debut the following night between the Broncos and Chiefs.
The Lions-Bills game also generated viewership increases of at least 27% in the key demographic groups of viewers aged 18-34, 18-49, and 25-54, compared to last year’s full-season average on Amazon.
