Amazon is six weeks into its multi-billion-dollar deal to stream the NFL’s “Thursday Night Football” games, and viewership has fallen by several million people.

There’s no panic from either the ecommerce giant or the NFL because, as both have stated, their deal is long-term and not focused on week-to-week numbers with a still-emerging technology that audiences are still adopting.

The audience decline is both in the Nielsen-measured viewership — it’s Nielsen data that Amazon uses to sell TNF airtime to advertisers — and in Amazon’s internal first-party viewership data.

The inaugural Amazon Prime Video TNF game this season was Week 2’s Chiefs-Chargers thriller that averaged 13 million per Nielsen and 15.2 million per Amazon’s data. Fast-forward to last week’s Cardinals-Saints shootout and the numbers are 7.8 million (Nielsen) and 8.9 million (Amazon + Nielsen).

That’s a 40 percent rate of decline for Nielsen numbers and 41.4 percent for Amazon numbers. It should be noted that the Cardinals-Saints game streamed against the rare “sports equinox” of all five major leagues playing on the same day (along with several other sports properties).

Still, the games have declined in viewership every week in Amazon’s own metrics, and in four of the weeks following the TNF season opener, per the Nielsen data.

(Note: All data provided by Amazon; the linear local TV numbers are broken out from the overall totals.)

How much of the overall audience fall-off stems from casual viewer curiosity waning — and losing fans frustrated over technical issues such as picture and sound quality — versus regulars turning off a couple of underwhelming games isn’t clear.

A bad, sloppy game is deadly in any sport for viewership, and for TNF the Colts-Broncos game on Oct. 6 and the Commanders-Bears game on Oct. 13 were the football version of the “Not great, Bob!” meme.

What is known is that it’s an 11-year contract that has Amazon paying the NFL a reported $1.2 billion a season for the right to stream the Thursday games (they also air on local over-the-air TV in each week’s participating team’s home markets; more below on that).

Both the NFL and Amazon view the deal as a long-term play, which makes sense, and don’t place much stock in the vagaries of weekly audience data. Instead, both have said producing a high-quality broadcast/stream and viewing experience is most important in terms of their internal success metrics and goals. Viewers have taken to social media to praise or damn Amazon for their viewing experience.

It’s Amazon policy not to comment on the week-to-week fluctuations in TNF viewership. Marie Donoghue, Amazon’s vice president of global sports video, did explain the company’s strategic view around TNF viewership during a conference call this summer: “This is the start of an 11-year deal, of course we want the biggest audience possible. But this is a big change for fans, and we know it’ll take some time,” she said.

Over the summer, I asked Brian Rolapp, the NFL’s chief media and business officer, about the league’s thinking around TNF viewership now that it’s mostly behind a paywall. Like Donoghue, he preached patience.

“We’re taking a package of games that’s been on broadcast TV for a long time and moving it to a digital platform. That’s going to take some time. We’re not overly worried about it,” he said. “We don’t keep score week to week (on audience numbers).”

Of course, the NFL has an entire in-house media unit devoted, among many things, to keeping track of audience numbers. That’s what an $11 billion company that relies on television does.

In reality, even with the declines, the Amazon TNF audience figures still dominate everything else on television on Thursdays, and win the key demographics that advertisers crave.

And maybe just as important for the future of the NFL, the Amazon games have a median viewer age of 46, which it said is seven years younger than the average age of NFL viewers on the linear TV networks.

For the season, Amazon’s TNF games are now averaging 10.3 million viewers per Nielsen Media Research data and 12.1 million with Amazon’s internal numbers baked into the total.

Amazon has told advertisers to expect 12.5 million viewers per TNF game this season, and it could yet achieve or top that number. There are nine TNF games left this season, and several on paper suggest they’ll draw bigger audiences.

And if they don’t hit the guarantees? We’re not privy to Amazon’s agreements with brands, but the logical assumption is the advertisers would get the industry-standard “make-good” ad airtime elsewhere. And if streaming TNF never achieves the desired viewership — we’re a long way from being able to predict that — then the partnership could end at some point. Many eyes across the sports and entertainment industry are fixated on this deal.

How does Amazon’s TNF viewership compare to the past? Comparing to last year isn’t an apples-to-apples equation because Thursday games in 2021 were split between the NFL Network and Fox, or on both along with Amazon simulcast streams. Being on a major cable network exposes any programming to a much larger audience.

The first three 2021 TNF games were on NFL Network alone and averaged 7.57 million viewers. The subsequent three weeks were NFL Network-Fox games that averaged 14 million viewers.

So, this year’s games have been in that range. We’ll know by the end of the year if Amazon can meet the viewership guarantees made to advertisers.

Another question around the situation: How much is traditional television adding to Amazon’s totals? This is important to understand amid the streaming-as-future discussion.

The local linear TV, i.e. non-streaming, accounts for about 9 percent of the total viewership so far, Amazon said. Over the first five games, local TV has accounted for about 963,000 viewers per TNF game. That doesn’t include last week, which didn’t yet have local numbers available.

The linear number is slightly lower than expected because the Dolphins-Bengals game on Sept. 29 occurred after swaths of South Florida were without power following Hurricane Ian. The Miami market’s over-the-air average for that game was just 166,000 viewers.

The biggest local TV numbers so far this season came for the Oct. 13 Commanders-Bears game, which had 1.26 million linear viewership in  the Chicago and Washington, D.C., markets. Chicago alone was 881,000 linear TV viewers — an upside to playing in the nation’s third-largest market.

The entire Amazon-NFL deal is a function of the companies trying to navigate the rapidly changing live sports television landscape. For Amazon, it’s a toe-tip beyond its vast streaming video business into the most powerful domestic live sports property — a relatively safe bet for a company that had $470 billion in revenue last year. The online retailer is using TNF to lure new subscribers to its base of roughly 80 million U.S. Prime Video users and to market its various products and services.

For the NFL, it’s a leap into what many across the industry hope is the future of live sports consumption in the near-term: a mix of linear and digital delivery of its inventory, catering to how various generations prefer to consume sports. The league debuted TNF in 2006, so it’s the safest of the NFL’s tentpole national primetime broadcasts with which to experiment with streaming near-exclusively.

The Amazon deal is part of the NFL’s $113 billion in media rights deals inked in 2021.

In other NFL games last week, Fox’s late afternoon window beat everything with 22.28 million viewers led by Chiefs-49ers, with the Pacific Northwest and SoCal seeing Seahawks-Chargers.

The network’s 1 p.m. regional window averaged 13.35 million viewers. That was led by Packers-Commanders along with Giants-Jaguars, Buccaneers-Panthers and Falcons-Bengals.

CBS had only a single-header window and averaged 14.55 million viewers. That was led by Lions-Cowboys followed by Browns-Ravens and Colts-Titans in the early games, and then Jets-Broncos as the lead late afternoon game, with some of the country getting Texans-Raiders.

NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” telecast of Steelers-Dolphins averaged a total audience of 16.5 million viewers, per the network.

COLLEGE FOOTBALL: No big numbers last week. The largest audience was 4.74 million at noon on ABC for No. 5 Clemson rallying with a freshman quarterback to beat No. 14 Syracuse in Death Valley.

The only other games to top four million viewers were Texas-Oklahoma State (4.61 million, ABC, 3:30 p.m.) and Iowa-Ohio State (4.37 million, Fox, noon).

This weekend’s marquee noon matchup is No. 2 Ohio State at No. 13 Penn State on Fox.

The “World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party” that’s known to non-fans as the annual Florida-Georgia rivalry game is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. on CBS at Jacksonville’s TIAA Bank Field. Georgia is ranked No. 1, and Florida is a three-touchdown underdog.

In prime time, we have a tasty matchup between No. 3 Tennessee and No. 19 Kentucky at 7 p.m. on ESPN. At 7:30 p.m. on ABC is No. 4 Michigan hosting in-state rival Michigan State — the first night game in the series, so good luck Ann Arbor residents and public services.

For the late-night crowd, ESPN has No. 12 UCLA and unranked Stanford kicking off at 10:30 p.m. at the Rose Bowl.

NBA: The league began its 2022-23 regular season on Oct. 18 with a doubleheader on TNT that produced some of its best opening-night NBA viewership numbers in recent years.

In the early game, the Celtics’ 126-117 win over the Sixers averaged 2.98 million viewers — a game played at the same time the Phillies were playing in the NLCS opener. Boston’s win was up 36 percent over last season’s equivalent opening-night early game (Bucks-Nets, 2.2 million), per Sports Media Watch. It was the best viewership since 5.6 million watched the Cavaliers and Celtics open the 2017 season.

In the late game, the Warriors’ 123-109 win over the visiting Lakers averaged 3.55 million viewers — the best NBA opening night audience since Clippers-Lakers averaged 3.58 million in pre-pandemic 2019, per Sports Media Watch.

The league also said its new NBA App and social platforms saw a league-record 148 million video viewers for opening night, a number that was up 200 percent from last season’s opening night.

It’s important to note that audience comparisons to games prior to 2020 are skewed because Nielsen didn’t include out-of-home (people watching at bars, restaurants, viewing parties). It’s unclear how much OOH now adds to NBA viewership, but in the NFL it’s as much as 10 percent of the total.

NBA viewership may get additional industry scrutiny this year because the league’s media rights will soon be up for negotiation. It will be the last of the domestic major leagues to land new deals amid the Age of Streaming in full blossom.

The league reportedly seeks $75 billion for its national broadcast and digital rights. Most games are broadcast under local regional sports network deals between teams and broadcasters.

Currently, the NBA gets a combined $2.6 billion annually from ESPN and Turner Sports under partnerships that began in 2016-17 and expire after 2024-25. The next round of deals is expected to land sometime before then and could follow the model of other leagues that split live game inventory between linear TV and streaming.

We’ve seen baseball put Friday night doubleheaders behind the Apple TV paywall, and some Yankees games were exclusive to Amazon Prime Video — which also now carries the NFL’s “Thursday Night Football” package. Some Notre Dame football games stream only via NBC’s Peacock+ service.

In hockey, the NHL’s latest deals include 75 games streamed exclusively on ESPN+ and Hulu, with the former assuming the league’s out-of-market streaming that had been on NHL.TV.

Major League Soccer has made the most radical media rights decision by streaming all of its live match inventory on Apple TV starting next year under a 10-year, $2.5 billion deal struck earlier this year. The forthcoming MLS streaming within the Apple TV universe isn’t fully exclusive, with some matches expected to still air on linear TV under to-be-announced deals.

What all this means is the NBA has slightly more clarity for its future media rights options and paydays.

GO DEEPER

The NFL routinely dominates TV ratings. How did the league become the behemoth it is today?

BASEBALL: So it’s an Astros-Phillies World Series. Not the Yankees-Dodgers matchup that would make network and ad executives drool, but an interesting series for sports media nerds keen to see how the viewership plays out in the weird times in which we live.

Philadelphia was last in the Fall Classic in 2008 (beating the Rays, averaging just over 13 million viewers) and 2009 (losing to the Yankees; averaging 19.3 million per game). Houston was most recently in the World Series a year ago, losing to Atlanta with an average of 11.7 million watching each game, and in 2019 (losing to Washington; 13.9 million) and 2017 (beating the Dodgers; 18.9 million).

When the Phillies won the 1980 World Series (beating the Royals in six games), the title-clinching Game 6 set a World Series television record with a 40.0 rating, meaning 40 percent of the nation’s TV sets were tuned into the game. An estimated 54.8 million people watched.

Times have certainly changed, and live sports viewership — thanks to a proliferation of options and the rise of streaming and other alternatives — outside of the Super Bowl and NFL has tumbled. Ad rates and media rights, on the other hand, have not.

Anyways, here’s a glance at American League and National League Championship Series viewership:

Yankees-Astros

• Game 1 (Oct. 19) – 4.9 million, TBS
• Game 2 (Oct. 20) – 5.89 million, TBS
• Game 3 (Oct. 22) – 4.67 million, TBS
• Game 4 (Oct. 23) – 4.67 million, TBS

Padres-Phillies

• Game 1 (Oct. 18) – 4.09 million, FS1
• Game 2 (Oct. 19) – 4.83 million, Fox/FS1
• Game 3 (Oct. 21) – 4.88 million, FS1
• Game 4 (Oct. 22) – 5.73 million, Fox
• Game 5 (Oct. 23) – 3.61 million, FS1

SOCCER: The National Women’s Soccer League’s title game between the Kansas City Current and Portland Thorns FC at Audi Field in Washington, D.C, is scheduled for 8 p.m. Saturday on CBS, Paramount+ and Twitch internationally. This is the NWSL’s first championship game in prime time — another win for the growing interest and investment in women’s sports. On the call in the booth will be Jenn Hildreth and Aly Wagner with Lori Lindsey and Jenny Chiu providing sideline analysis and reporting. Christina Unkel is the rules analyst. Pre-match coverage begins at 6:30 p.m.

All viewership data is from Nielsen and Adobe Analytics, and other metrics via the TV networks, Nielsen, Sports Media Watch, ShowBuzz Daily, 506Sports.com, and the leagues. All times Eastern unless otherwise noted.

(Photo of the Cardinals’ Marco Wilson from Thursday night’s game: Norm Hall / Getty Images)