Amazon's Thursday Night Football games to be included in Nielsen's weekly TV ratings
Duane Prokop

Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) on Tuesday said it has reached a deal to have Prime Video's upcoming carriage of the National Football League's Thursday Night Football games included in Nielsen's (NYSE:NLSN) weekly TV ratings.
It will be the first time that a streaming TV service will have its programming included in the weekly ratings from Nielsen (NLSN), which for decades has been the yardstick by which TV program viewing and popularity has been measured.
Under the three-year agreement, Nielsen (NLSN) will measure the viewership of each Thursday Night Football game, as well as pre-game and post-game programming, on both Prime Video and Twitch.
Srishti Gupta, Amazon's (AMZN), director of media measurement for Amazon Ads, said that the partnership with Nielsen (NLSN) will help advertisers by providing them with "apples-to-apples comparisons across their multi-channel media investments" and "access to metrics from Amazon that will provide actionable insights to understand brand awareness, engagement, and sales."
It's no secret why Amazon (AMZN) would want to place a bigger stake in the market for televised sports, and the NFL in particular. According to Nielsen (NLSN), NFL games and their pre- and post-game programs made up the top 27 live TV telecasts, and 47 of the top 50 such programs in 2021.
Nielsen's (NLSN) will begin tracking Thursday Night Football viewership on Amazon (AMZN) beginning with the August 25 pre-season game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Houston Texans. Amazon's (AMZN) regular season Thursday night game season will include 15 games starting with Los Angeles Chargers at the Kansas City Chiefs on September 15.
Amazon (AMZN) secured its exclusive Thursday Night Football game package more than a year ago.