Amazon (AMZN -2.21%) and the National Football League have renewed their Thursday Night Football deal, with the eCommerce giant also getting exclusive rights to stream one regular season game on Prime Video and Twitch.
In a press release, the two announced that under the multi-year deal Amazon gets the rights to stream 11 of the Thursday night games broadcast by FOX and the exclusive rights for a Saturday game in the second half of the NFL’s 2020 regular season. The game will also be televised in the teams’ home markets.
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The NFL had an exclusive streaming deal with Yahoo in 2017 but that was for a game played outside of the U.S. A person familiar with the matter told CNBC Amazon will have the same exclusivity for the NFL’s next two seasons following 2020. It's not clear if the future games will be late in the season and played on a Saturday.
"As our relationship has expanded, Amazon has become a trusted and valued partner of the NFL," said Brian Rolapp, Chief Media and Business Officer for the NF, said in the press release. "Extending this partnership around Thursday Night Football continues our critical mission of delivering NFL games to as many fans in as many ways as possible both in the United States and around the world." In 2019 the NFL said digital streaming of the Thursday night games surpassed an average minute audience over 1 million, up 43% from the 2018 season.
While terms of the deal were not disclosed, the eCommerce giant paid the NFL about $65 million a season for the deal it signed for the 2018 and 2019 seasons, amounting to about $130 million. Amazon has been partnering with the NFL since 2017.
