Amazon Prime Video gets solid 1st slate from NFL
A defensive coordinator trying to put together a game plan to stop Justin Herbert or Patrick Mahomes has an easier task than the NFL trying to put together the schedule for Thursday Night Football.
There's trying to put together intriguing matchups, only four teams can play multiple Thursday games, and there are the considerations of who and where teams are playing the week before because of the short turnaround.
Add into it a new television partner paying $1.2 billion a season to carry those games for 11 years, and the pressure is ratcheted up even more.
Yet, despite all the hurdles. Amazon Prime Video is pleased about its slate of games for its first season as the exclusive carrier of “Thursday Night Football.” The Los Angeles Chargers-Kansas City Chiefs matchup on Sept. 15 was announced two weeks ago, while the remaining 14 games were unveiled on Thursday as part of the full rollout of the NFL regular-season schedule.
“We're very excited. We think we have some can't-miss games. A lot of these are all about the matchup,” said Marie Donoghue, Amazon's vice president of Global Sports Video.
Donoghue said Amazon made their first formal pitch to the league's broadcasting department the week before the Super Bowl to let them know about their focus and priorities. As with all of the networks, discussions continued up until the final schedule was set.
Even though Amazon is the league's first new broadcast partner since Fox in 1994, Donoghue is familiar with the process as a senior VP at ESPN for 19 years. Jeffrey Kaiser, Amazon's head of US Sports Programming, was with NFL Network for five years.
Hans Schroeder, the executive vice president of NFL Media, also noted there was a little bit of a familiarity process with Amazon because
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