🎁 The NFL's Plan to Create a New Holiday

If you’re reading this, you must really love sports business.

I thought about not sending a newsletter this week because of the holiday but I figured there would be a few crazy people like me who needed to get their sports biz fix.

We have an abbreviated edition this week focused on Black Friday and a giveaway winner announced at the end:

🗞 The Big Story: The NFL’s Plan to Create a New Holiday

🏆 Winner’s Circle: Content Starter Pack Winner

⬇️ Listen: It’s the last episode of 2023 where we review our predictions from the past year and make some more for ‘24!

🗞 The Big Story

Amazon spent over $100 million on one football game this year and it could change the way we watch sports forever.

Thanksgiving Dominance: Historically, NFL games on Thanksgiving rank as the most viewed regular season match-ups of the year.

Just look at last year:

• 2022 - Giants vs. Cowboys, 42.1M viewers (regular season record)*

• 2022 - Bills vs. Lions, 31.8M viewers

*This was also the 5th most watched US TV Broadcast of the year behind (1) Super Bowl LVI, (2) NFC Championship, (3) AFC Championship, (4) AFC Divisional Game

And the NFL isn’t stopping, because now they want to conquer the day after Thanksgiving too.

Black Friday Woes: Since its inception in some Maddison Avenue board room, Black Friday has been the antithesis of what makes Thanksgiving so successful for the NFL.

With the main problem being that millions of Americans are leaving their homes to shop.

But with the rise of online shopping this whole dynamic has changed, and now the NFL is poised to capitalize on changing consumer behavior.

Enter Prime Video: Amazon already spends $1 billion annually to put Thursday Night Football behind a paywall. A decision that helped lead to record Prime sign-ups during its 2022 premiere.

But now Amazon is spending an additional $100M for a stand-alone game on Black Friday (keep in mind, at $1 billion per season the streaming platform is only spending $67M per TNF game).

It’s also just $10M less than NBC paid to host a Wild Card playoff game on its streaming service, Peacock.

And there’s another catch: Amazon isn’t even charging people to watch it.

Unlike their regular Thursday Night games, this Black Friday game between the Jets and the Dolphins will be free for everyone to watch on Amazon.com or on the Fire TV App.

So what’s the deal?

The Game Plan: The truth is Amazon probably doesn’t care as much about breaking even with the football game.

What they actually want is to get more people to its platforms and boost eyeballs on every other area of their business:

• QR codes will pop up throughout the game prompting viewers to shop on Amazon

• Celebrity chef David Chang will do cooking demonstrations in and around the game to promote Amazon Fresh or Whole Foods orders

• Dude Perfect will host an alternate stream for kids and families

• Garth Brooks will be performing a live concert after the game to promote Amazon Music and Twitch

And they’re shelling out to promote this game, spending at least $1M to license the rights to a Rolling Stones Song for a 60-second ad.

Bigger Winner: However, I’d argue the NFL will come out of this thing looking even better. Because they now get to test the feasibility of adding another football-centered day to the league calendar where people are encouraged to stay home.

And if a streaming platform like Prime Video is willing to spend millions for the distribution rights, expect Black Friday to stick around as a new tentpole event.

This is why the NFL really is king…

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🏆 Winner’s Circle

Congrats to Ralph J. for winning the Sports Content Creator Starter Pack, and thank you all for entering.

I do these giveaways about once a month so stay tuned for more.

⏱ In Other News

• Is MLS going to Vegas?

• ‘The Blind Side’ beef just took another turn.

• The Jets are using literal fireworks to get fans to sit down.

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👋 I’m so thankful for all of you who read BOTN every week! Enjoy your long weekend, we’ll chat next Friday.