(Stock image via Pixabay, Graphic by The Desk)
(Stock image via Pixabay, Graphic by The Desk)
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Amazon will offer its Black Friday game between the Eagles and the Bears on Prime Video around the world.
Streamers in more than 240 countries and territories will be able to watch the game on November 28.
Viewership of Amazon’s Black Friday NFL games has increased each year since it started offering the event in 2023.
Amazon has secured the global distribution rights to the National Football League’s (NFL) post-Thanksgiving Day match-up.
The Black Friday (November 28) game between the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles and National Football Conference (NFC) rival Chicago Bears will stream around the world on Amazon’s Prime Video platform in more than 240 countries and territories, the tech company said on Wednesday.
Amazon already offers a package of regular-season NFL games through its offering of “Thursday Night Football” and has offered the NFL’s Black Friday game to U.S. streamers over the past two years. Historically, those same games were offered by other partners, including DAZN, to football fans outside the U.S.
Jay Marine, the Head of Global Sports at Prime Video U.S., said the agreement emphasizes Amazon’s growing commitment to investing in live sports rights.
“Black Friday is becoming one of the best sports holidays of the year,” Marine said. “This can’t-miss game between the Super Bowl Champion Eagles and the surging Bears stands at the center of a huge day for all of us at Amazon.”
The Black Friday games typically give Amazon an opportunity to market its products and services to consumers on the first day of the year-end holiday shopping season. Football fans initially treated the game with a lukewarm reception: The first Black Friday game between the New York Jets and the Miami Dolphins attracted just 9.61 million viewers, making it one of the lowest-rated games of the 2023 NFL season.
Things improved last year when Prime Video offered free access to the Black Friday game between the Las Vegas Raiders and the Kansas City Chiefs, which ended with a nail-biter. More than 13 million people watched that game on Prime Video, Amazon-owned Twitch, the NFL Plus app and local TV stations in the cities of each team, according to Nielsen data.
Allowing Amazon to distribute the game on Prime Video around the world should help boost overall viewership figures, though it isn’t clear how Amazon will sell ads in countries outside the U.S. For the NFL, the partnership with Amazon is part of a broader strategy to generate new football fans in other countries as part of the league’s ongoing growth strategy.
“Expanding the availability of our games to NFL fans around the world is a key priority for us,” Hans Schroeder, the Executive Vice President of Media Distribution at the NFL, said in a statement.
Amazon is positioning the game as part of an extended day of live sports coverage and shopping promotions tied to the holiday weekend. The company’s coverage will begin earlier in the day with the return of “The Skins Game” golf event at 10 a.m. Eastern Time, featuring PGA Tour players Tommy Fleetwood, Justin Thomas, Xander Schauffele and Keegan Bradley from Panther National in South Florida.
Following the golf broadcast, Prime Video will switch to Philadelphia for the NFL pregame show from Lincoln Financial Field ahead of the 4 p.m. Eastern Time kickoff. Post-game coverage will segue directly into the “NBA on Prime” doubleheader, starting at 8 p.m. Eastern Time, with the Milwaukee Bucks facing the New York Knicks from Madison Square Garden, followed by the Dallas Mavericks playing the Los Angeles Lakers from Crypto.com Arena.
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