Nielson and Amazon have reached a milestone three-year deal for measuring viewership of ‘Thursday Night Football’ which will kickoff an unprecedented run next month as an exclusive on Prime Video, according to Deadline.
Starting in September, pregame, in-game and postgame elements of the NFL Thursday Night broadcast will count towards the rating, both on Prime Video and also on the Amazon-owned streaming platform Twitch.
Additionally, over-the-air local TV station carriage in both teams’ local markets, guaranteed under longtime NFL rules, as well as out-of-home viewing will also be added to the metric, which will enable it to be a more robust figure to compare with Sunday and Monday National Football League games.
The deal marks the first time a streaming service will be included in Nielsen’s national TV measurement service, and a landmark first for a live streaming program.
For the last two years, Nielsen has captured total streaming on Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+ and Hulu and also added the likes of HBO Max and Apple TV+ to those same rankings within that time span, and those numbers show promise for live sports streaming content.
It is likely going to be a massive boon for advertisers, and Sports SEO verticals as well, as the digital content will bring more viewership to the platform, with the hopes that some of that viewership will explore other content, especially in the case of Twitch.
Should viewer numbers trickle in to other areas of Twitch, and specifically to content creators, there could also be a boon for influencer marketing campaigns as well, potentially.
