The shift to streaming has occurred, as evidenced by the audiences drawn to NFL games broadcast on cable and streamed by Amazon Prime.
Last week, the night numbers showed for Bengals-Ravens on Thursday night an audience of 13.63 million. Last night’s game on ESPN between the Dolphins and Rams drew just 12.2 million viewers.
ESPN’s revelation was, unsurprisingly, hidden in a press release touting the year to date MNF audience. (Question: Why do most PR people think everyone else is stupid?) The reality is that ESPN’s broadcasts are struggling compared to Amazon Prime’s Thursday night broadcast, which no doubt prompted the confusing decision to cut most of the remaining games to be moved to Monday evenings also for ABC.
The Dolphins-Rams game fell into the small handful that are not simulcast. Lo and behold, Amazon Prime has already caught ESPN. The only question is if and when Prime games will perform as three-letter broadcast networks.
