Thursday Night Football will continue to be available on Amazon Prime.
The NFL and Amazon announced today that they have reached an agreement on a two-year deal for Thursday night games to air on Amazon in 2018 and 2019.
Although traditional TV ratings aren’t released for Amazon Prime, and neither party revealed how much Amazon is paying for Thursday night rights, this is not believed to be a particularly big deal, either in terms of the number of viewers or the amount of money it brings in.
Instead, the deal is more about the NFL putting a toe in the streaming water, and about Amazon having some small partnership with the biggest property on American television.
Some day, streaming may be a big enough business that an NFL rights deal could go exclusively to streaming. That day is not particularly close, but if the day ever comes, the Amazon deal will have paved the way.
