Prime Video Returns to Weekly Nationwide Television Prominence Live-Streaming NBA Games
Photo: Amazon Web Services
The NFL “Thursday Night Football” and post-season might be over for Prime Video, but the basketball season is filling the massive football void from a distance.
Amazon’s inaugural partnership live-streaming select NBA games as part of the league’s 11-year agreement worth $77 billion with ESPN (ESPN Unlimited), NBCUniversal (Peacock), saw the streamer’s Jan. 25 live-stream between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Los Angeles Clippers generate 1.15 million viewers across 862,000 households, according to new data from Nielsen.
The tally was good enough to rank the 16th most-viewed sports event on television for the week ended Jan. 25.
Prime Video’s exclusive live-stream on Jan. 15 between the New York Knicks and the Golden State Warriors generated 1.9 million viewers across 922,000 households to rank the 12th most-viewed televised sports event through Jan. 18.
By comparison, “Thursday Night Football” averaged 15.33 million viewers per game during the 2025 regular season.
This marked the highest average in the 20-year history of the NFL’s Thursday night package, surpassing prior highs, including 13.65 million in 2019 (across Fox, NFL Network, and Prime Video). It represented a 16% increase from the 2024 season’s average of 13.2 million, continuing a trend of double-digit year-over-year growth.
Peacock and the new ESPN Unlimited streaming platforms concurrently live-stream NBA and select college basketball games with their sister networks NBC Sports and ESPN, respectively.