Amazon will live stream ten Thursday Night Football games next season

If you want to watch Thursday Night Football games on a live stream next season, Twitter will no longer be your destination.

After a bidding war with Google (YouTube), Twitter, and Facebook, Amazon ponied up $50 million for live streaming rights for ten TNF games in the 2017 NFL regular season. That’s exactly five times the amount that Twitter paid for the same package for last season. The Seattle Seahawks’ 24-3 win over the Los Angeles Rams in December was one of the Twitter-streamed specials.

Unlike the Twitter streams, which were free to watch whether you were a Twitter user or not, there will be a paywall on Amazon. Only Amazon Prime subscribers ($8.99 per month or $99 for a year) have access to the games. NFL Network-exclusive games are not live streamed, so Amazon Prime will only stream the games broadcast on NBC and CBS, and those networks will also have the ability to stream the games on their respective platforms. Verizon will also stream games to its wireless customers.

We’re in a new, fascinating era for sports rights. Cord-cutting is all the rage and there’s a market for major sports to be broadcast on over-the-top services. This is a huge get for Amazon, who are probably hoping for an uptick in Amazon Prime subscriptions once football season starts. The NFL regular season schedule isn’t going to be released for another couple of weeks, but we’ll see if the Seahawks are one of those twenty teams whose lone Thursday night appearance will be part of the Amazon Prime schedule.