Thursday Night Football: How to watch, new tech

Amazon Prime Video is the home for “Thursday Night Football” this upcoming season, marking the first time in league history a streaming service will be the solo carrier for a package of national games. The era begins Aug. 25 with a preseason game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Houston Texans. The first regular season game for Amazon will be Sept. 15, when the Los Angeles Chargers play the Kansas City Chiefs in Week 2 of the NFL season. Local broadcast stations for the teams playing in a given week will also carry the games over the air.

Amazon signed a deal with Nielsen this week to measure the telecasts, a sign of confidence that it expects solid ratings. Eighty million U.S. subscribers have watched Amazon Prime Video at least once in the past year, the company said in May. For context, Netflix ended the second quarter with 73.3 million paid monthly subscribers in the U.S. and Canada. Disney+ ended its most recent quarter with 44.5 million subscribers in the U.S. and Canada.

People who want to watch the games will need to sign up for an Amazon Prime account, which costs $14.99 a month or $139 a year, or a Prime Video membership, which is $8.99 a month.

What's new?

To get viewers toward its NFL broadcast, which cost Amazon $1 billion per year, live games will automatically start playing when people log onto Amazon.com. The games will also be featured prominently on Prime Video’s home screen to alert subscribers they’re taking place in real time.

Viewers will be given the choice to watch, record or start from the beginning of the broadcast. Viewers who choose record will get access to all games for the entire season automatically.

Amazon is also debuting other new technology features. On most platforms (it’s still working on the technology with Roku), Amazon will give users the ability to see real-time statistics on screen using its X-Ray technology. In addition to standard stats such as yards and touchdowns, they will include so-called next-generation figures, such as average time to throw for quarterbacks and yards after contact for running backs and receivers. Players will wear uniforms enhanced with Amazon Web Services chips, allowing for instant updates.

Amazon will also have a customer package of highlights via X-Ray that update through the game for viewers who missed the early action and want to catch up. For Fire TV users, viewers will be able to speak commands such as “show me stats” or “play the last touchdown” into the remote control. Those features will be ready for the Thursday Night Football regular season opener.