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Amazon in talks for NFL Thursday Night Football exclusivity on Prime Video

Amazon was already streaming NFL Thursday Night Football via Twitch and aims to deepen the deal with the American football league by 2023.

TJ Denzer

March 4, 2021 12:05 PM

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Since it officially got its hands into the broadcast of NFL Thursday Night Football via Twitch and Prime Video, Amazon has obviously felt good about the deal. It does bring in massive amounts of viewers who would otherwise have no choice but to turn to NFL Network packages on traditional cable TV. Reportedly, Amazon wants to deepen this deal. The tech giant is apparently in talks to angle for exclusive broadcast of NFL Thursday Night Football via Prime Video by 2023.

The recent reports of Amazon’s dealings with the NFL regarding Thursday Night Football come via CNBC. Allegedly, Amazon is in talks to pay as much as $1 billion to secure broadcasting for an entire season worth of Thursday Night Football games for Prime Video outside of local broadcast by any two teams’ local TV networks. Currently, the talks are allegedly ongoing and nothing has been decided yet. Also, because the Fox network still has broadcasting rights to NFL Thursday Night Football till 2022 and is not expected to be bought out early, it is expected we won’t see any official change in deals till the 2023 season.

It was back in 2018 that Amazon first entered into dealings with the NFL, welcoming Thursday Night Football to Twitch for a handful of games. It was a situation that saw large platforms like Ninja also host games. Amazon furthered this relationship by pulling a three-year deal to broadcast 12 NFL Thursday Night games across the 2020, 2021, and 2022 seasons. With these ongoing talks, Amazon is angling to bring it all to Prime Video streaming service, though sources familiar have also said that Amazon won’t go anywhere near the $1 billion mark for anything less than full exclusivity.

With this in mind, it will be interesting to see if Amazon and NFL can come to an agreement regarding Thursday Night Football. Stay tuned as we continue to follow updates and information regarding further dealings.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.