The National Football League today announced two updates on the media distribution of its games for the 2024 NFL season. The announcement was made from the 2024 NFL annual meeting in Orlando, Florida by Hans Schroeder, NFL executive vice president of media distribution.
Peacock (NBCUniversal) has secured the rights to exclusively stream the Week 1 game in São Paulo, Brazil on Friday, Sept. 6. The historic game in Brazil -- the NFL's first-ever regular season game in South America -- also marks the first time the league has played a game on Friday night of their opening weekend in over 50 years. The Philadelphia Eagles are the first team to be announced for the game, with their opponent and kickoff time to be determined later.
Amazon's Prime Video -- home of Thursday Night Football -- will add an NFL Wild Card game to their schedule this season. This will mark the second time an NFL playoff game has been available exclusively via a streaming service following last season's Wild Card game on Peacock.
"As media consumption habits evolve, the NFL continues to work with our partners to put our games on digital platforms where our fans are increasingly spending their time," said Schroeder. "The viewership success of both Thursday Night Football on Prime Video and the historic Wild Card game on Peacock last season are strong indicators our streaming distribution is resonating with our fans."
"It's exciting for Peacock to exclusively showcase the NFL's first-ever regular season game in Brazil as part of NBC Sports' unprecedented presentation of three primetime games on the NFL's opening weekend," said Rick Cordella, president, NBC Sports. "Peacock continues to deliver the best experience in sports streaming, as this game will follow this summer's Paris Olympics and Paralympics, which will have every event live streamed on the service."
"We are thrilled to bring the excitement of an NFL Wild Card playoff game to Prime Video for the first time," said Jay Marine, global head of sports and ads, Prime Video. "Following our first two groundbreaking seasons of Thursday Night Football and our first-ever Black Friday Football game, we're proud to expand our relationship with the league, and we're looking forward to continuing to innovate for fans this season."
In keeping with a long-standing NFL policy, both the Week 1 Brazil game on Peacock and the Wild Card game on Prime Video will be available on free, over-the-air broadcast television in the local markets of the competing teams as well as on mobile devices with NFL+.
Last season, the AFC Wild Card game between the Miami Dolphins and Kansas City Chiefs exclusively on Peacock averaged approximately 23 million viewers, setting a record as the most-streamed live event in U.S. history. Additionally, the game reached 32.1 million total viewers.
In its second season as the home of Thursday Night Football, Prime Video averaged 11.7 million viewers during the 2023 season, an increase of +22% versus 2022. Additionally, Thursday Night Football featured 13 weeks of double-digit, year-over-year viewership gains and all 16 games won the timeslot among total viewers against competing programming on broadcast and cable.
The NFL is the most valuable content in all of sports and entertainment. Over the course of 2023, 93 of the top 100 most-watched programs on television were NFL games.
