‘Thursday Evening Soccer’ Amazon Bow “Resounding Success,” Prime Video Exec Says – Deadline

EXCLUSIVE: “Whereas we’re nonetheless ready for official Nielsen scores, our measurement reveals that the viewers numbers exceeded all of our expectations for viewership,” Prime Video’s high sports activities exec Jay Marine mentioned immediately in a notice to employees on the “resounding success” of the streamer’s official kickoff on September 15.

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“Our first unique TNF broadcast delivered probably the most watched evening of primetime within the U.S. within the historical past of Prime Video,” the VP Prime Video, International Head of Sports activities, additionally instructed colleagues within the memo (learn it under). “It is a huge achievement. Throughout our TNF broadcast, we additionally noticed the largest three hours for U.S. Prime signal ups ever within the historical past of Amazon – together with Prime Day, Cyber Monday, and Black Friday.”

Now, as Marine said, there isn’t a official Nielsen data but to provide concrete type to those claims. Nevertheless, as we await the precise numbers, clearly, as they have been with the September 1 two-episode premiere of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Energy, Prime Video is feeling fairly satisfied.

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The Kansas Metropolis Chiefs’ hard-fought 27-24 win over the Los Angeles Chargers at Arrowhead Stadium final week was the primary of 15 games a season on the Jeff Bezos-founded streamer in a take care of the NFL set to run over the subsequent 11 years. Placing their cash the place its hopes and streams are, Prime Video is estimated to have forked out round $1 billion per season for the unique rights to the gridiron matchups — a quantity that Bezos and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell might need chatted about from their perch watching the Chiefs-Chargers recreation final week.

Whereas the Nielsen numbers are nonetheless to come back, we do know some actual numbers that Amazon itself put on the market not too way back. In conversations with media patrons earlier this 12 months, Amazon anticipated about 12.5 million viewers per recreation. In a linear-to-streamer transition, that’s a dip from the weekly viewers that the Murdochs-owned Fox had on common in its final full season of TNF final 12 months.

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Amazon has pledged so as to add extra viewership-data transparency concerning TNF.

In the meantime, right here is Marine’s full memo to Amazon employees:

All,

I needed to take a second to mirror on final Thursday evening and share my congratulations and private thanks. On Thursday evening, we made historical past by delivering the primary common season recreation in our groundbreaking 11-year settlement with the NFL. And by each measure, Thursday Evening Soccer on Prime Video was a powerful success. From the stellar manufacturing of the sport, to the standard of the stream prospects watched at dwelling, Prime Video proved we’re among the many best in sports activities media.

To place it in context, let me share a few of the outcomes. Our first unique TNF broadcast delivered probably the most watched evening of primetime within the U.S. within the historical past of Prime Video. It is a huge achievement. Throughout our TNF broadcast, we additionally noticed the largest three hours for U.S. Prime signal ups ever within the historical past of Amazon – together with Prime Day, Cyber Monday, and Black Friday. And whereas we’re nonetheless ready for official Nielsen scores, our measurement reveals that the viewers numbers exceeded all of our expectations for viewership. This was additionally an enormous technical achievement – our tech and product groups rose to the problem and delivered a improbable streaming expertise to our tens of millions of viewers.

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I couldn’t be extra happy with all of our groups – everybody throughout engineering/tech, product, programming, manufacturing, expertise relations, authorized, BA, advertising and marketing and PR has labored tirelessly over the previous 18 months to make sure that soccer followers throughout the nation would see our best, and throughout each side you all greater than delivered. Your buyer focus, exhausting work and dedication has been superb and provoking.

And as we prefer to say, it’s at all times “Day 1.” That’s definitely true for all of us immediately. That is just the start. We’ll proceed to remain buyer centered, innovate, and get higher each week – beginning this week in Cleveland with an enormous Steelers vs Browns rivalry recreation!

Thanks once more and congrats!

Jay