There’s one week left in the NFL’s regular season, but Amazon has already concluded its second year of exclusively streaming Thursday Night Football, which delivered big viewership gains on Prime Video. The 15 games in 2023 drew an average of 11.86 million viewers, up 24% from Amazon’s debut TNF season in 2022 (9.58 million average audience).

Those figures are still down from the 16.2 million viewers Thursday night games averaged during the 2021 season on Fox and the NFL Network. And Amazon’s numbers continue to fall well short of the 20 million-plus viewers that routinely tune in to NFL games on Fox, CBS, and NBC each Sunday, as well as ABC/ESPN on Mondays.

But the growth is promising for Amazon, and it comes despite a failed effort prior to the season to change how Nielsen measures its streaming number. The NFL and Amazon wanted the media monitoring service to incorporate first-party streaming data into audience measurements for TNF, a move that irked some leaders at linear networks. 

Nielsen ultimately decided not to use that method for official viewership numbers. However, with the first-party streaming data added in, Amazon says TNF games averaged 12.95 million viewers during the 2023 season. Efforts to accredit that reporting style are currently under review by the Media Rating Council, with the hope of change coming next season.

Still Getting Younger?

While streaming is typically considered more of a younger person’s forte, the key 18-34 demographic for TNF actually grew at a smaller rate during the 2023 season than its overall audience. The 2.4 million average figure for those viewers was a 14% increase from 2022. However, the age group is still trending up since TNF’s switch to exclusive streaming, beating out the 1.9 million average seen in 2021 on linear television.

Many corporate mergers, both in and outside of sports, are anything but unions of equals—instead, they’re more like acquisitions in another name. The newly formed United Football League is bucking that trend in its attempt to create a stable spring football league. 

The UFL, created from a merger of the XFL and USFL, splits its predecessor entities right down the middle in many key respects. The eight-team league will feature four teams from each of the XFL and USFL: Birmingham, Houston, Memphis, and Michigan franchises will compete in the new USFL Conference, as expected; and Arlington, San Antonio, St. Louis, and Washington, D.C., teams will play in the XFL Conference. Former XFL president and CEO Russ Brandon will lead the business operations of the new entity under the same title and role. Daryl Johnston, formerly the USFL’s president of football operations, will continue in the same role for the UFL. 

The UFL also brings in each of the former leagues’ primary media partners: the USFL’s Fox and the XFL’s ESPN. Team head coaches were drawn equally, as well, from the USFL and XFL.

Cutbacks, another common trait of mergers, are carrying over to the UFL, as the USFL’s New Jersey, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh teams were dropped, as were the XFL’s Houston, Las Vegas, Orlando, and Seattle teams. The UFL’s Houston team, however, will take on the Roughnecks nickname used in the XFL, as opposed to the USFL’s Gamblers. 

Troubled Lineage

On-field action for the UFL will begin on March 30, but other details, including team schedules and broadcast plans, have yet to be announced. The UFL’s move to draw the very best from the USFL and XFL in equal measure is a deliberate attempt to separate itself from decades of failed pro football leagues that sought to either challenge or supplement the NFL, including prior iterations of both the USFL and XFL, plus the Alliance of American Football. 

Gerry Cardinale, founder and managing partner of UFL investor RedBird Capital Partners, called it “a tremendous opportunity to achieve something unique” and he believes the UFL has “a legitimate shot at becoming one of the top professional leagues in the country after the big four,” referring to the NFL, NBA, MLB, and the NHL.

Editor’s note: RedBird Capital Partners is a joint venture partner in Front Office Sports investor RedBird IMI. 

A run-of-the-mill local promotion with the Detroit Pistons turned into an unprecedented level of business and national-level publicity for the Wingstop restaurant chain, ironically by virtue the team’s historic losing streak.

This past fall, Detroit-area Wingstop locations began offering five free boneless wings to customers who ordered with the promotional code “PISTONS” following a victory by the team. The season-long offer represented a common tie-in between a restaurant brand and a local pro franchise. But as that promotion continued, the Pistons endured a 28-game, two-month losing streak that tied an NBA record for futility, set a new mark for a slide confined to a single season, and only ended on Dec. 30.

Waiting for a Pistons win, however, only heightened the anticipation among fans. A victory over Toronto to end 2023 prompted a run of business at local Wingstops topping all prior measures, and the redemption began a viral craze for the brand with an extended series of posts by fans, media, and influencers about the free wing offer finally becoming relevant.

Wingstop itself got in on the social media action, drawing more than 2.6 million views for a X post reading “Let there be wings” over a sped-up clip of a crowded series of escalators. 

Extended Rise

The unexpected success of the Pistons’ promotion tops a furious run of growth for Wingstop in recent months, with sports representing a key part of its marketing strategy and overall expansion.

The company has seen its stock rise more than 40% since the Oct. 30 start of that Pistons losing streak, and it reported in November a 26.4% rise in quarterly revenue, to $117.1 million, as well as a 46% jump in net income, to $19.5 million. 

“We have an elevated amount of ad fund investment to deploy, growing consistent with our system sales growth of roughly 30%,” said Michael Skipworth, Wingstop president and CEO, during a recent earnings call. “That’s allowing us to show up in more premium placements like live sports. We’ve shown up in the NFL in a big way. We’re showing up in the NBA right now.”

The Olympics are continuously trying to keep up with the times, and NBC is taking that strategy to the next level. The network that has the Olympics’ U.S. media rights until 2032 is adding Snoop Dogg as a commentator for this summer’s Paris Games. 

Snoop Dogg will be on site in France to provide commentary about the events. During the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, the rapper hosted a Peacock streaming program with Kevin Hart, interviewing athletes throughout the Games. But this year, the musician will be live in primetime and on NBC’s main network channel. Beyond the Olympics, Snoop Dogg has previously joined the broadcast team of his hometown Los Angeles Kings, providing game commentary and even showing off his play-by-play skills.

The most recent edition of the Olympics, the 2022 Beijing Games, drew a record-low primetime audience for NBC, averaging 11.4 million viewers. The Tokyo Olympics (15.5 million primetime average) produced the lowest viewership for the Summer Games since 1988.

TV ratings aside, turning to a well-known pop culture figure to help generate interest is just the latest effort to try and modernize the Olympics. During the Paris Games, new sports like skateboarding, surfing, and even breaking (better known as break dancing) will make Olympic debuts. In the 2028 Los Angeles Games, cricket and flag football will be added.