Amazon is prepared to pay the National Football League (NFL) a record $120 million to be the exclusive streaming home of a single playoff game next season, according to a report published this week.
On Wednesday, Front Office Sports revealed the staggering figure based on unnamed sources. It comes about two weeks after the Wall Street Journal said Amazon and the NFL had worked out a deal to bring a playoff game to Prime Video during the 2024-25 football season.
Amazon was offered the opportunity to stream an NFL playoff game during the 2023-24 football season, which ended earlier this month with Super Bowl LVIII, the Journal said. Instead, Amazon passed on the opportunity, which was quickly snatched by Comcast’s NBC Universal. Comcast paid around $100 million to stream the game on Peacock, which saw the Kansas City Chiefs take on the Buffalo Bill in an event streamed by more than 23 million households. (Kansas City went on the win the Super Bowl.)
Instead of a playoff game, Amazon forged a deal with the NFL to offer the league’s first-ever Black Friday match-up, which was streamed through Prime Video. The game was viewed by less than 10 million households, according to Nielsen data, making it the second-least viewed game on Prime Video that year. Amazon paid around $100 million for the rights to that one game, according to numerous reports.
This time around, Amazon isn’t going to make the same mistake: It’s willing to cut a big check, but it wants a big game in return — and it’s hoping to draw Peacock-sized numbers, if not more.
The playoff game Amazon lands will depend on the standings of the NFL’s 32 teams. It wasn’t clear if Amazon’s playoff game will be aligned with the American Football Conference (AFC) or the National Football Conference (NFC). The playoff game streamed on Peacock last year was associated with two AFC teams.
The $120 million Amazon is expected to pay for the single NFL playoff game is on top of the $1 billion per year Amazon shells out to be the exclusive home of Thursday Night Football, which streams on Prime Video and Twitch. Amazon’s exclusive rights to Thursday night games runs through the 2032-33 season.
