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Amazon’s NFL Retail Therapy Experiment

What Prime’s $100 million bet on a Black Friday game portends for the future of live sports on streaming.

Was Amazon’s Black Friday game a gimmick, or the future of sports?
Was Amazon’s Black Friday game a gimmick, or the future of sports? Photo: Cooper Neill/Getty Images
Julia Alexander
November 29, 2023

Why in the world did Amazon pay $100 million to broadcast a football game at 3 p.m. on Black Friday, a time when most Americans are nursing food hangovers, arguing with family, or wandering big box stores? The New York Jets, after all, have been a disaster since Aaron Rodgers went down with an Achilles injury early in his first game. And Black Friday isn’t Thanksgiving, a veritable football holiday with three games stretching from noonish through the evening.