The NFL has dominated the Thanksgiving sports landscape for years. They’ve of course had their traditional Cowboys and Lions games on the holiday itself, and expanded reach by featuring a Black Friday game for the first time in 2023. But they’ll be joined on the day after Thanksgiving in 2025 by the NBA, as Amazon Prime looks to pair the two thanks to their new broadcasting deals.
Amazon Set To Dominate Sports Landscape On Black Friday 2025
When Amazon gained the broadcast rights to Thursday Night Football for the 2023 campaign, they added an interesting wrinkle. For the first time ever, the NFL would air a game on Black Friday.
It didn’t exactly prove to be a booming success. The Aaron Rodgers-less New York Jets got demolished by the Miami Dolphins by a score of 30-0, and the game averaged fewer than 10 million viewers.
Amazon Prime planning NFL-NBA crossover for Black Friday 2025 https://t.co/8IaOtwEU0G
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) November 27, 2024
But Amazon is hoping that it would be a stepping stone. A second version was scheduled for the 2024 season (Chiefs vs Raiders), and they have even bigger plans for next year. Thanks to the company securing NBA rights with a new broadcast deal starting in 2025, they’ll be able to combine the viewership of both leagues during Black Friday, and they plan to.
Jeff Kaiser, the head of sports programming at Prime Video, said that fans should expect up to 12 hours of exclusive live sports content via the Amazon platform next year. He added that additional wrinkles may be thrown in, like featuring an NFL and NBA team from the same city. Or even having a crossover in talent from the pre and postgame shows from both leagues.
In order to save themselves from competing with the NFL on Thanksgiving, the NBA has ceased to play on the final Thursday of November since 2010. But it typically returns on Black Friday with a heavy slate, and 2024 will be no different, as there are 10 games scheduled to be played this year.
