Amazon Plans A Black Friday Filled With Football and Garth

This week, Amazon  in its second year of streaming NFL Thursday Night Football, will be live streaming the first NFL game on Black Friday, the traditional start of the Holiday shopping season. 

The game will feature AFC East rivals, Miami Dolphins and New York Jets and will originate from MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Kick-off is at 3 p.m. (ET). Amazon, which pays the NFL about $1 billion per annum over 11 years, is ponying up an additional $75 million to live stream the game.

Forbes reports Amazon plans a list of live events surrounding the game. The kick-off show will begin at 1:30 p.m. (ET). Amazon had previously announced viewers won’t need to subscribe to Amazon Prime to view the Black Friday game, anyone with an Amazon account can stream the game. Hence, the game will be free to anyone with an Amazon account on any device from anywhere. In a press release, Jay Marine, VP, global head of sports, Prime Video said, “We’re thrilled to create a new holiday tradition on the national sports calendar with the NFL’s first-ever Black Friday Football game.” As with NFL Thursday Night Football, the game will also be televised on local broadcast stations in the home markets of the two teams playing.

Afterwards, at 7 p.m. (ET), the inaugural Amazon Music Live event featuring Garth Brooks will be live streamed on Amazon’s Twitch. The festivities will originate from the grand opening of Brooks’ “Friends in Low Places & Honky-Tonk”, a bar in Nashville. Among the other events planned for the game include TNF contributor and chef David Cheng will take a look at the tailgating and some ideas about Thanksgiving leftovers. Also, Amazon will separately stream its comedy show, TNF with Dude Perfect.

This season, the audience for Amazon Prime’s live stream of TNF has increased notably, compared to its inaugural season last year. So far, after ten weeks, TNF is averaging 12.27 million viewers in 2023, a 26% increase compared to last season’s ten-game average of 9.72 million. Additionally, season-to-date TNF on Amazon Prime has a median age of 48, compared to 55 for NFL games on broadcast/cable television.

Although NFL games may be new to Black Friday, it has long been a busy day with college football games. Throughout this Black Friday, there will be 12 nationally televised games with eight nationally ranked schools playing.