Amazon’s “Thursday Night Football” franchise set another viewership record last week, with the Detroit Lions’ 44-30 win over the Dallas Cowboys drawing the largest audience for a Prime Video NFL broadcast since the service took over the package in 2022.
The December 4 game averaged 19.39 million viewers across all measured platforms, according to Nielsen ratings data. Viewership peaked at 22.18 million, and the telecast improved 12 percent from last year’s comparable post-Thanksgiving Lions game, which averaged 17.29 million. The figure includes local TV viewing of the game in the Dallas and Detroit markets.
The Lions-Cowboys game exceeded the previous Thursday Night Football record of 17.76 million set earlier this season during the Washington Commanders game against the Green Bay Packers, Amazon noted in a press release.
The strong performance continues a year-long trend for Prime Video. Thursday Night Football is averaging 15.20 million viewers this season, up 15 percent from the 2024 full-season average of 13.20 million. Viewership is also up 28 percent compared to 2023 and 59 percent compared to 2022, the streamer’s first year with exclusive rights to the package, per Nielsen data.
Some of the overall growth is connected to changes in Nielsen’s measurement. Since September 1, all NFL telecasts have been reported using Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel methodology, which blends traditional panel metrics with data from smart TVs, cable and satellite set-top boxes. Nielsen has also expanded its out-of-home measurement to nearly all U.S. states, where before it monitored around four dozen media markets.
Even with those adjustments, the Lions-Cowboys game stands out as the largest audience to date for Prime Video, which has now posted year-over-year increases in 11 of its 13 games. The streamer also set a Black Friday record earlier this season, averaging 16.33 million viewers for the Chicago Bears game against the Philadelphia Eagles.
Detroit remains one of the strongest national draws of the 2024–2025 NFL season. The Lions have been involved in several high-performing telecasts across broadcast and cable, including the most-watched early Thanksgiving game on record (47.7 million viewers) and the most-watched “Monday Night Football” broadcast on ESPN since 2006 (25.4 million viewers).
The Cowboys continue to fuel audience growth as well. Their Thanksgiving Day win over the Kansas City Chiefs averaged 57.23 million viewers, the largest regular-season audience in NFL history.
Prime Video’s next high-profile test arrives on Christmas Day, when the Lions face the Minnesota Vikings as part of Netflix’s three-game holiday slate. Thursday Night Football games on Prime Video are available to stream on phones, tablets and computers for free through the Prime Video channel on Twitch.
