Stream NFL Thursday Night Football games with Amazon for free starting tonight

By John Levite
published

More football is never a bad thing.

Tonight the Minnesota Vikings play the Los Angeles Rams on Thursday Night Football (opens in new tab), a game set to start at 8:20 p.m. Eastern. This is Week 4 of the NFL season, and up until now the Thursday Night Football games have mostly aired on cable television. If you're like me and you haven't had a way to watch those games, you've been very sad on Thursdays, especially since it can be tricky to find all the best ways to stream NFL games. Well, Amazon's multi-million dollar deal with the NFL kicks in today, and Amazon plans to make the games far more available to cord cutters like us. Not only can you watch the games on Prime Video (opens in new tab) like last year, but Amazon also plans to stream the games live on Twitch.tv.

The games streaming on Twitch and Prime Video will continue from now until Week 15 of the season (opens in new tab), not including the Thanksgiving games. The Prime Video stream will also have access to brand new X-Ray features. Amazon plans to use it to show real-time stats, team information, and even a shopping section. It will do all of that without taking you away from the game. This feature will work on all of Amazon's Fire TV devices (opens in new tab) like the 4K Fire TV media player (opens in new tab) or the currently discounted Fire TV Cube. Use the new Shop section to find sports memorabilia, like hats or shirts, from the teams.

Like previous years, the game will feature multiple types of commentary. Last year's Thursday Night Games had a commentary channel for people who were new to the game. This year, one of the options will be all-female commentary from sports journalists Andrea Kremer and Hannah Storm. According to Amazon, this will be the first time in NFL history the color commentary came from an all-female group, which is awesome.

The Twitch version of the stream will have something similar to X-Ray provided through extensions on the site. It will include real-time stats, standings, and Twitch-exclusive features like special NFL emotes. The Twitch streamer GoldGlove will provide his own commentary, which is probably a first for an official broadcast of an NFL game as well.

If the one game just isn't enough football for you, Amazon also has a pre-game show called The Drive that will interview two opposing players. That starts at 7:15 p.m. Eastern tonight. And Amazon has announced plans for a new season of All or Nothing featuring the Dallas Cowboys. Amazon's going all in on football, so get ready.

Prime Video is free for Prime members. If you aren't already a Prime member (opens in new tab), you can start a 30-day free trial. If you are, you can just download the Prime Video app on your phone or access it via Amazon (opens in new tab).

See on Amazon (opens in new tab)

John Levite
John Levite
Deals Editor

J.D. Levite has been in the deals game since 2012. He has posted daily deals at Gizmodo, The Wirecutter, The Sweethome, and now covers deals for Android Central, iMore, and Windows Central. He was there for the first Prime Day and has braved the full force of Black Friday. If you cut him, he bleeds savings. But don't try it for real. That's a metaphor.

4 Comments
  • The All or Nothing season featuring the Cowboys has already been released earlier this year, and they haven't announced plans for which team is gonna be next.
  • Is it really free, if you need to pay for Prime to get Prime Video for these games?
  • Being a Prime member I tried it last night. too many glitches, pauses, video freeze ups. I know it wasn't my PC or my 70mbps internet causing issues. Maybe it was like Prime day, too many trying it to provide a decent stream? I finally turned on my TV and probably will pass on trying it again. Why bother anyway, I still have to endure some commercials and the rest of the time I get a screen saying network running commercials please stand by?? To think Amazon paid a ton of money to the NFL just for bragging rights? Waste of money if you ask me.
  • I watched the entire game on my Fire TV Stick, and only had one issue, late in the game. The stream froze and I had to restart it. Aside from that one glitch, it worked perfectly.