Amazon’s Bears-Packers NFL Playoff Stream Smashes Record

Amazon’s Prime Video shattered the all-time NFL streaming record, drawing an average of 31.61 million viewers for its wild-card playoff game between the Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers, as reported by Deadline. The broadcast blew past the previous record by more than 4 million viewers, cementing streaming as a dominant force in live sports.

• King of the streamers: The game’s viewership easily surpassed the 27.52 million record set by Netflix just weeks earlier, making it the first streaming-exclusive NFL broadcast to cross the 30 million viewer threshold. The impressive audience represents a 43% surge from Prime Video’s playoff game last year.

• A perfect storm: It helped that the game itself, a matchup featuring one of the NFL’s oldest rivalries, was a nail-biter. The Bears staged a dramatic last-minute rally to win 31-27, with the broadcast peaking at more than 34 million viewers in the final minutes.

The timing couldn't be better for the NFL or Amazon. The league’s bet on placing a high-stakes playoff game on a streaming service clearly paid off, validating its digital strategy. For Amazon, the viewership numbers give it serious leverage, making its NFL package a much hotter commodity, especially as it will have to re-bid for the rights to the wild-card game next year, according to a report from NBC Sports.

While Amazon celebrated its streaming milestone, traditional broadcasters also had a huge weekend, with Fox pulling in 41 million viewers for its top game. The record playoff numbers build on a successful regular season for Prime Video, which saw its Thursday Night Football viewership jump 16% over the prior year. The NFL’s streaming-only playoff strategy has evolved since its first experiment with Peacock two years ago.