The NFL’s 2024 Thanksgiving Day games smashed viewership records. The Bears vs. Lions thriller saw a total of 37.5 million viewers tuning in to watch the game, setting a record for the noon time slot for Thanksgiving. The average viewership across all three games on Thursday was 34.2 million – another NFL record.
Compare this to the Chiefs vs. Raiders game the next day, where only 13.5 million people. This matchup was as exciting as the Chicago-Detroit rivalry game but had 20 million less viewers. Sure, the Thanksgiving Day games always have skewed viewership numbers – it is an American tradition, after all. However, Black Friday’s game still had below-average viewership numbers (compare its 13.5 million to the 2024 average 18.6 million). Thus, it would be naïve to not acknowledge that this dip in viewership numbers is influenced by one key factor: the game was only available to those with an Amazon Prime subscription.
Amazon gained exclusive rights to Thursday Night Football games in 2022. It wasn’t the only platform to gain this privilege: ESPN+ began to broadcast select games starting the same year. Last season, the NFL introduced games on NBC’s streaming platform Peacock, including the exclusive Chiefs vs. Dolphins playoff matchup. The game drew in 23 million viewers, an impressive number at face value, but considering the Wild Card round as a whole average 38 million viewers, this drop can easily be attributed to the requirement of a subscription-based service.
NFL games that are only available on streaming consistently bring in below average viewership, even though the league’s numbers have been consistently rising over the past few seasons. For example, the Monday Night Football game between the Chargers and Cardinals that aired on ESPN+ had only 2 million viewers, which was the lowest figure since 2008.
If you wanted to watch every Sunday, Monday, and Thursday Night Football game this season, you would need subscriptions to the three streaming services previously mentioned, plus Netflix for the Christmas Day games. The compounded cost of all these platforms for an entire NFL season is $209.80 ($41.96/month for 5 months.) Compare this to the cost to watch football (as recently as 3 years ago) when all games were available on cable TV channels: free.
The NFL’s recent trend of pay-walling games for those who are willing and able to pay for a litany of streaming services betrays the sport’s roots. Football has long been a sport for the working class, and even impoverished, American. Giving into corporations and prioritizing the league as a business, rather than the staple of a beloved sport, isn’t exactly a new thing, but it’s never been so noticeable. If the NFL wants to continue to boost its numbers and grow the game (which it should), it should not extend upon the deals it made with companies like Amazon and Netflix. In the meantime, fans are stuck with the long, lucrative contracts that have let millions in the dust.
