The National Football League (NFL) announced today it has reached an agreement with Amazon Prime as its exclusive partner to deliver a live OTT digital stream of Thursday Night Football to a global audience across devices during the 2017 NFL Season. Amazon Prime Video will stream the 10 Thursday Night Football games broadcast by NBC and CBS, which will also be simulcast on NFL Network, once again securing the league's "Tri-Cast" model of broadcast (NBC/CBS), cable (NFL Network), and digital (Amazon Prime Video) distribution.
The Thursday Night Football games will be made available to the tens of millions of Amazon Prime members worldwide, on the Amazon Prime Video app for TVs, game consoles, set top boxes and connected devices, which includes Amazon Fire TV, mobile devices and online. The TNF games will also be available to Prime Video members internationally in over 200 countries and territories.
"We are continually looking for ways to deliver our games to fans wherever they watch, whether on television or on digital platforms and we are thrilled to bring Thursday Night Football to Amazon", said Brian Rolapp, Chief Media and Business Officer for the NFL. "As has been the case with all our streaming initiatives, we look forward to continuing to innovate with our partners as we learn the best ways to serve our fans both this season and into the future."Â
"Our focus is on bringing customers the best premium video programming, when and how they want to watch it. Streaming Thursday Night Football on Prime Video is a great step for us toward that vision, and offers tremendous new value for Prime members around the world," said Jeff Blackburn, Senior Vice President, Business Development & Entertainment, Amazon. "And we're thrilled to extend our ongoing content relationship with the NFL – the gold standard for sports entertainment – on behalf of our Prime customers."
This agreement bolsters an already strong partnership between the NFL and Amazon around All or Nothing, the Emmy-nominated Amazon Original Series produced by NFL Films that is entering its second season.
With this partnership, the NFL has again extended its digital presence, making the most valuable content in sports and entertainment available across multiple platforms.
About Thursday Night Football
Presented by Bud Light, Thursday Night Football started in 2006 with an eight-game schedule exclusively on NFL Network. By 2012, Thursday Night Football had grown to a 13-game schedule exclusively on NFL Network, where it remained through the 2013 season. For both the 2014 and 2015 seasons, CBS partnered with NFL Network to present an expanded 16-game Thursday Night Football schedule.
In February of 2016, the NFL announced that both CBS and NBC will broadcast five Thursday Night Football games, growing the package to 10 broadcast games in 2016 and 2017 from eight in 2014 and 2015. All Thursday Night Football *broadcast games in 2017 will continue to be simulcast on NFL Network. NFL Network will also exclusively televise an eight-game schedule of regular season games comprised of *Thursday Night Football, late-season games on Saturday, and additional games to be determined.
For more information about ways to watch Thursday Night Football, visit: nfl.com/tnf
