Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) benefitted from record NFL viewership in recent years. Outside its "Thursday Night Football" exclusive streams, the ecommerce company also has rights to a Black Friday and Christmas game in 2025, but that might not pay off as big as initially expected.
Amazon's Kansas City Chiefs Dilemma
The Kansas City Chiefs entered the 2025 NFL season as one of the favorites to reach Super Bowl LX. After all, the team has been to three straight Super Bowls, winning two of them.
After a loss to the Los Angeles Chargers on Sunday, the Chiefs are now out of the race for the NFL Playoffs with a 6-8 record. This marks the first time the team will not be in the NFL Playoffs after 10 straight postseason trips.
Quarterback and star Patrick Mahomes, who was drafted by the Chiefs in 2017, has been to the NFL Playoffs in each of his NFL seasons and has three Super Bowl wins and five Super Bowl appearances.
Along with suffering a loss and their postseason hopes disappearing, the Kansas City Chiefs are also dealing with a Mahomes injury, with their quarterback suffering an ACL injury near the end of their game.
While this is bad news for the Chiefs and Mahomes, there's a company that could suffer in the equation.
Enter Amazon. The 2025 NFL schedule revealed three Christmas Day games, two on Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) and a third belonging to Amazon for its Prime Video streaming platform. The Amazon matchup is the Denver Broncos and Kansas City Chiefs and Denver Broncos, two teams that made last year's playoffs and favorites to have strong 2025 seasons.
Amazon's Christmas Day game, set for an 8 p.m. ET stream, will now feature the 12-2 Broncos and the 6-8 Chiefs. Once a huge primetime clash with implications of the division title, the game now means next to nothing for the Chiefs and means playoff seeding for the Broncos.
Amazon has been enjoying strong viewership for the 2025 season and could likely have set a new record on Christmas Day.
Prime Video saw 19.39 million viewers for the "Thursday Night Football" Dec. 4 clash between the Dallas Cowboys and Detroit Lions, the biggest viewership for Amazon's Thursday coverage since it began streaming in 2022.
In the 2025 season, Amazon is averaging 15.2 million viewers, up 15% from last year’s season-to-date average, according to FrontOfficeSports.
Amazon also enjoyed strong viewership for its Black Friday game between the Chicago Bears and Philadelphia Eagles with 16.3 million viewers, up 21% to last year's Black Friday game total.
The Chiefs are the most-watched team in the NFL to date. The team was part of a new regular-season record for the Chiefs-Cowboys Thanksgiving Day game on CBS, averaging 57.2 million viewers.
Netflix Could Be A Winner
While Amazon could see less people tune into its Christmas Day NFL game given the Chiefs out of the NFL Playoffs and Mahomes no longer playing, streaming rival Netflix could be the big winner.
Netflix has two NFL games set for Christmas Day, with the Dallas Cowboys taking on the Washington Commanders at 1 p.m. ET and the Detroit Lions and Minnesota Vikings meeting in the 4:30 p.m. ET game. While only one of those teams has a winning record (Lions, 8-6), the games don't face as much competition of programming during the day.
At the same time, Amazon kicks off its Broncos and Chiefs game at 8 p.m. ET on Christmas Day, Netflix will release the second part (3 episodes) of the record-breaking fifth and final season of "Stranger Things."
The first part of the fifth season set an English-language premiere record for Netflix with 59.6 million views in its first week.
While fans of both the NFL and Netflix were likely planning to watch "Stranger Things" after all three NFL games or the day after Christmas, the Chiefs and Mahomes’ injury may change things.
It's entirely possible now that Netflix sees huge viewership for the first two games on Christmas and Amazon's game sees a drop in viewership, which could help Netflix gain viewers for "Stranger Things."
Another winner could be The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS), whose ABC and ESPN will air five NBA games on Christmas Day. Disney's last two games are matchups of the Houston Rockets vs. Los Angeles Lakers (8:30 p.m. ET) and the Minnesota Timberwolves vs. Detroit Pistons (10:30 p.m. ET)
Those NBA games will go head-to-head against Amazon's now-weak matchup of the Broncos and Chiefs.
Time will tell if there's room for NBA games, NFL games and "Stranger Things" episodes all to have top viewership on Christmas.
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