The NFL is breaking new ground this season with a September game in Brazil, the first time a regular-season contest will take place in South America.
The Week 1 game will be exclusively streamed on Peacock, giving NBCUniversal three stand-alone games in the first week of the season.
The Philadelphia Eagles are one of the teams playing in the game. Their opponent and the kickoff time will be announced at a later date. The September 6 contest will also mark the first time in more than 50 years that the league is kicking off its season on Friday night.
Along with the season-opener news, the NFL also confirmed that Prime Video has secured exclusive rights to stream a wild-card playoff game next January. (That news first emerged in February but is now official.) Peacock’s carriage of the Kansas City Chiefs-Miami Dolphins wild-card game last January drew record-setting tune-in for a livestream, averaging about 23 million viewers. Amazon, meanwhile, is two years into a long-term deal to stream 15 Thursday Night Football games each season and also hosted the first NFL game on Black Friday last November.
Although these streaming games are labeled as “exclusives,” the games will continue to air on broadcast TV in each team’s home market as well as on mobile devices via NFL+ per the NFL’s media rights agreements.
Hans Schroeder, EVP of media distribution for the NFL, made the announcements at the league’s annual meeting in Orlando, FL.
“As media consumption habits evolve, the NFL continues to work with our partners to put our games on digital platforms where our fans are increasingly spending their time,” Schroeder said. “The viewership success of both Thursday Night Football on Prime Video and the historic wild-card game on Peacock last season are strong indicators our streaming distribution is resonating with our fans.”
NBC Sports President Rick Cordella said it was “unprecedented” to have a single company carrying three opening-week prime-time games. He noted that the September event on Peacock will follow the Paris Olympics and Paralympics, which will deliver livestreams of every event across several weeks.
Jay Marine, global head of sports and ads, Prime Video, said the company is “proud to expand our relationship with the league.”
