Amazon Streams NFL on Black Friday with In-Game Shopping Deals

Amazon streamed the first NFL game ever held the day after Thanksgiving, and it offered in-game Black Friday shopping deals to viewers. CBS Sports said Amazon came up with the idea and paid $100 million to the NFL to have an annual game on “Black Friday” starting this year. That’s in addition to Amazon’s $1 billion “Thursday Night Football” package, CBS reported.

In a post on Amazon, the marketplace explained the game-time shopping experience:

“Throughout the livestream, Black Friday Football viewers will be presented with special opportunities to shop special deals and limited quantity product drops from brands like TCL, Dyson, LEGO, and Nintendo and access all Amazon’s Black Friday deals from the comfort of their living room. Be sure to keep an eye out for exciting deals appearing on the screen as you watch, with new deals available each quarter during the game, as well as before kickoff and after the game ends.”

To really understand the in-game shopping, Geekwire’s Managing Editor Taylor Soper watched the game and reported on the experience, writing in part:

“The result was a bevy of QR codes shown during breaks that promoted Black Friday deals for products on Amazon.com, as well as other advertiser websites. Amazon put out a handful of limited time “Black Friday Football offers” — for example, a Nintendo Switch bundle that became available during the first quarter, and an Apple Watch Series 9 deal shown in the second quarter. Scanning the QR code took customers to Amazon.com.”

Soper said the QR codes made the commercial breaks “a tad more compelling,” but said constantly having to whip out his phone and scan the QR codes before the commercial ended was cumbersome. He offered some ideas on how the experience could be improved.

While only Prime members can watch Amazon’s NFL Thursday Night Football games, anyone could sign up for an Amazon account and watch Black Friday’s game.

It seems Black Friday shopping really is a sport.

Ina Steiner

Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). She is a member of the Online News Association (Sep 2005 - present) and Investigative Reporters and Editors (Mar 2006 - present). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com. See disclosure at EcommerceBytes.com/disclosure/.