Amazon will once again be streaming Thursday Night Football for free this year. The coverage will kick off this Thursday, Oct. 8 at 8:20 p.m. ET, with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers vs. Chicago Bears. The full schedule, found here, includes 11 games and culminates in the Christmas Day game between the Minnesota Vikings and the New Orleans Saints, which actually lands on a Friday. In addition to streaming on Prime Video, Amazon will also stream the games for free on Twitch. Amazon will be using their X-Ray feature on Fire TVs and mobile devices to provide real-time stats, insights, and, new for this year, is the ability to call up replays on-demand to re-watch top plays. This is the 4th season of Thursday Night Football on Prime Video and Amazon has extended their deal with the NFL for 3 more years, through 2022.
I really don’t understand the appeal of this. NFL fans consider Thursday Night Football to be some of the worst football of the week. Twitch people never think to watch football because they usually aren’t sports fans, outside of pro wrestling.
Why is Amazon wasting so much money on this?