TV Ratings: Streaming Hurt NFL Regular-Season Ratings

National Football League ratings for the just-concluded 2022-23 regular season are expected to be down about 3% from a year earlier, a decline that is primarily because of the move of “Thursday Night Football” to Amazon.com Inc.’s Prime Video.

During the 2021-22 season, the NFL averaged 17.1 million viewers per game, which was its highest average in six years. This season, the average is likely to be around 16.6 million viewers, according to The Wall Street Journal citing Nielsen data.

“Thursday Night Football,” which for the first time this season was available to most of the country only through streaming, averaged 9.58 million viewers, Nielsen said, a number that includes viewership from local TV stations carrying the games in the markets of the two competing teams. 

A year earlier, when “Thursday Night Football” was available on Fox, the league’s NFL Network channel and Amazon’s Prime Video, it averaged 16.2 million viewers. That figure included a highly rated Christmas Day matchup (which was on a Saturday). Without that game, “Thursday Night Football” averaged 15 million viewers. In the four instances where “Thursday Night Football” games were available exclusively on the NFL Network that season, the average audience was around 8 million viewers. 

Amazon also tracks viewing using its own methodology, and said its analysis showed the games averaging 11.3 million viewers for the season. Amazon said the average median age for its coverage was 47, which is seven years younger than what the games average on traditional broadcast and cable television. 

A ratings decline for the “Thursday Night Football” franchise was expected given the transition to streaming. However, even Amazon’s first-party viewership numbers are lower than the 12.6 million viewers per game that media buyers say the company guaranteed advertisers before the season started.

Amazon’s performance may also have been hurt by several lackluster games. Many matches initially thought to be competitive turned into snooze fests or routs, including the low-scoring Oct. 6 Denver Broncos-Indianapolis Colts match and the lopsided Dec. 1 Buffalo Bills-New England Patriots game. Traditionally, the Thursday package of games has been less star-studded matchups than NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” and ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” matches.

Nonetheless, Amazon Prime Video Vice President and Global Sports head Jay Marine said in a statement that the company is “ecstatic with the results and achievements” of its maiden season. 

Ratings were up for NBC, Fox and CBS‘s Sunday packages of games. 

NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” saw a 3% gain in average audience to 19.9 million viewers, and nine of its games topped the 20 million viewer mark. Fox’s Sunday afternoon coverage jumped 4% to 19.4 million viewers per game while CBS’s Sunday afternoon coverage was up nearly 3% to 18.5 million viewers.

“Monday Night Football” on Walt Disney Co.’s ESPN was down about 3% in viewers to 13.8 million. ESPN would have likely been up this season if not for the cancellation of the Cincinnati Bengals-Buffalo Bills match on Jan. 2 after Bills player Damar Hamlin suffered cardiac arrest during the game. That game was averaging close to 21 million viewers at the time play was stopped, and it wasn’t included in the Nielsen numbers because it wasn’t finished.