Reports: Amazon Prime Video to air NFL playoff game next season

Amazon Prime Video will carry an NFL postseason game next season, according to multiple reports.

It will be the second straight year that an important NFL game will be carried exclusively on a streaming platform. The Jan. 13 AFC wild-card game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Miami Dolphins streamed on Peacock.

NBCUniversal paid $110 million for the rights to the game, according to various reports, with Amazon expected to pay more.

The Wall Street Journal was the first to report that Amazon will air a playoff game next season.

Under the NFL’s contract, each of its four broadcast partners — NBC, CBS, Fox and ESPN/ABC — gets at least one wild-card game. Of the two remaining games, one rotates each year between NBC, CBS and Fox, while the other is up for bid.

This season’s 16-game package on Prime Video averaged 11.86 million viewers, according to Nielsen, a 24% increase over the 2022 inaugural season. Twelve games averaged more than 10 million, doubling 2022 and triggering some performance clauses allowing it to carry a playoff game.

Despite rancor among fans, the game on Peacock was the most-watched event on a streaming service. The Chiefs’ 26-7 victory averaged 23 million viewers on Peacock, NFL+ and on NBC affiliates in Kansas City and Miami, and had a total reach of 27.6 million, according to Nielsen.

By comparison, the late Saturday game between the Los Angeles Chargers and Jacksonville Jaguars on Jan. 14, 2023, averaged 20.61 million viewers.

Comcast reported at the end of last year that Peacock had 31 million subscribers. There were 2.8 million new subscribers to the streaming service during the weekend of the wild-card game, according to the subscription analytics firm Antenna.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.