NFL Will Have Black Friday Game Starting in 2023
NEW YORK — Amazon and the National Football League announced that in 2023, Prime Video will exclusively stream a newly scheduled "Black Friday" game the Friday after Thanksgiving Day.
The first-ever NFL Black Friday game will take place Friday, November 24, 2023, with an expected kick off of 3 p.m. ET.
The participating teams will be announced when the 2023 schedule is released.
"Thanksgiving is synonymous with football and we're excited to give our fans another day of NFL action during this holiday weekend," said Hans Schroeder, Chief Operating Officer for NFL Media. "Amazon is uniquely positioned to partner with us for this game as Black Friday is one of the most important days of the year for their business."
"Thursday Night Football has already proven tremendously successful on Prime Video, delivering millions of viewers every week, and we're excited to expand our relationship with the NFL with the inaugural Black Friday game, starting next year," said Jay Marine, Global Head of Sports, Prime Video. "Black Friday is the unofficial start of the holiday season, and we're thrilled to kick it off with a gift for football fans across the country with this new game."
Through the first five games of its inaugural season on Prime Video, Thursday Night Football is averaging 10.8 million viewers according to Nielsen Media Research and is up +48% from the first five TNF games in 2021 among viewers in the hard-to-reach adult 18-34 demographic, and up +25% in adults 18-49.
The NFL is the most valuable content across the sports and entertainment landscape with NFL games making up all 34 of television's most-watched programs since the start of September. Through Week 5 of the 2022 regular season, NFL games are averaging 16.8 million viewers per game.
The NFL and Amazon first partnered on the game distribution as part of a Tri-Cast distribution model (along with NBC, CBS, and NFL Network) of Thursday Night Football during the 2017 season. That relationship expanded in the spring of 2021 when, in the NFL's first-ever all-digital package, Prime Video acquired the rights to be the exclusive home of Thursday Night Football.
