BY JOE REEDY
Amazon Prime Video will carry an NFL postseason game next season, people familiar with the matter confirmed to The Associated Press.
The three people spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity Friday because neither the league nor the streaming platform has made the announcement.
The Wall Street Journal was the first to report that Amazon is getting a playoff game.
It will be the second straight year that an important NFL game will be carried exclusively on a streaming platform. The Jan. 13 AFC wild-card game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Miami Dolphins streamed on Peacock.
According to various reports, NBCUniversal paid $110 million for the rights to the game, with Amazon expected to pay higher.
Under the NFL’s contract, each of its four broadcast partners — NBC, CBS, Fox and ESPN/ABC — gets at least one wild-card game. Of the two remaining games, one rotates each year between NBC, CBS and Fox, while the other is up for bid.
This season’s 16-game package on Prime Video averaged 11.86 million viewers, according to Nielsen, a 24% increase over last year’s inaugural season. Twelve games averaged more than 10 million, doubling 2022, and triggering some performance clauses allowing it to carry a playoff game.
Despite some rancor among fans, the game on Peacock was the most-watched event on a streaming service. According to Nielsen, the Chiefs’ 26-7 victory averaged 23 million viewers on Peacock, NFL+ and on NBC affiliates in Kansas City and Miami, and had a total reach of 27.6 million.
By comparison, the late Saturday game between the Los Angeles Chargers and Jacksonville Jaguars on Jan. 14, 2023, averaged 20.61 million viewers.
Comcast reported at the end of last year that Peacock had 31 million subscribers. According to the subscription analytics firm Antenna, there were 2.8 million new subscribers to the streaming service during the weekend of the wild-card game.
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