Amazon, Amazon Prime, And TNF. Hitting On All Cylinders -- September 20, 2022

See this note for background. At that post, juist a couple of days ago:

5. NFL TNF: as predicted, Amazon is improving the TNF experience. First, they brought in two of the best announcers. Second, working with NFL, it appears TNF will feature top contests. TNF might now compete with MNF and SNF. I look for more improvements for TNF; already there are others including multiple streams like the PGA does. TNF is only available on Amazon, except for viewers who live where the teams are based. So, this past Thursday, viewers in Kansas City and Los Angeles could watch the game on their local network if they had an antenna; the rest of the nation could only see if they subscribed to Prime Video, which is bundled with Amazon Prime. 

Today, from CNBC:

From the linked article:

Amazon’s first broadcast of “Thursday Night Football” attracted a record number of new Prime signups over a three-hour period, more than during similar periods on Prime Day or other big shopping days such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday, an executive said in a memo viewed by CNBC.

The matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Los Angeles Chargers last week was the first of 15 games Amazon will broadcast as part of a deal with the National Football League. Amazon is spending about $1 billion per year to exclusively stream Thursday Night Football through 2023, CNBC previously reported.

“By every measure, Thursday Night Football on Prime Video was a resounding success,” Jay Marine, global head of Amazon’s sports division, wrote late Monday in the memo to staff.

Nielsen has yet to release official viewership numbers for the game. Marine said Amazon’s measurement “shows that the audience numbers exceeded all of our expectations for viewership.”

Amazon is betting heavily on sports broadcasting with the hope that it will boost its Prime membership. The Prime subscription program, which charges $139 per year for a host of perks including free shipping, now has some 200 million subscribers worldwide. Amazon has said there are 80 million active Prime Video households in the U.S. [200 million x 139 = 27,800 million. Is that $28 billion in subscription fees paid up-front!]

It’s beefed up its Prime Video content in other ways to hook viewers and new subscribers. The company recently debuted its long-awaited series “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” which is derived from the appendices of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” books. Amazon said the first episode of the series, which set a record for being the most expensive show ever made, attracted more than 25 million viewers globally in its first day.