Amazon Integrating AI into ‘Thursday Night Football’ Games to Help Viewers Feel Like Part of the Game
The 2023 NFL season is creeping closer, which means outlets responsible for broadcasting games are getting their ducks in a row in preparation. Fans who watch “Thursday Night Football” on Prime Video will notice some changes this year, especially if they tune into the analytics-focused “Prime Vision” alternate stream.
According to reporting from The Verge, Prime Video has been making full use of artificial intelligence (AI) to improve its “TNF” broadcasts this year. Amazon analytics expert Sam Schwartzstein told The Verge that the most frequent feedback received from viewers after the first season of national broadcasts of “TNF” being exclusively available on Prime Video was that they wanted to be more deeply integrated into the strategy of games.
This season, fans will get a much fuller sense of what it’s really like to play the game. “TNF” might pull up graphics in fourth-down situations telling viewers what the team should do in this particular scenario, or it may highlight which player on the defense is getting ready to blitz, based on past situations where the down-and-distance were similar. These new features will be available on the Prime Vision stream of “TNF” games.
“What [the broadcast] is doing is saying, now you can watch the defense the same way the quarterback does,” Schwartzstein says.
Machine learning has been crucial in helping Amazon prepare these new features for the season. The company trained a learning model on 35,000 plays from the past few seasons, in order to help it learn the rules of the game and predict when players might run a particular route or blitz a certain way.
Amazon is also bringing back alternate broadcasts of “TNF” games, specifically those from Dude Perfect and LeBron James’ “The Shop: Uninterrupted.” Dude Perfect alternate streams were a part of the 2022 “TNF” season from the very beginning, while the “Uninterrupted” stream wasn't introduced until October of last year.
What fans won’t see in 2023 is “TNF” games in 4K. The company has confirmed it will start streaming games in High Dynamic Range (HDR), but 4K will have to wait at least one more season. When asked by The Verge about offering games in 4K, Amazon director of live sports production Jared Stacy said simply, “We think HDR has the biggest impact on fans, and it’s most noticeable to the most number of people.”
Amazon has clearly been doing some tinkering under the hood to ensure its 2023 “TNF” season is as successful as possible. The company also announced this week it will bring shoppable ads to its Black Friday game between the Miami Dolphins and New York Jets, and that it will be “aggressive” in pursuing more sports for its streaming platform in the future.
Amazon Prime Video
Amazon Prime Video is a subscription video streaming service that includes on-demand access to 10,000+ movies, TV shows, and Prime Originals like “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” “Jack Ryan,” “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “The Boys,” and more. Subscribers can also add third-party services like Max, Showtime, STARZ, and dozens more with Amazon Prime Video Channels. Prime Video also offers exclusive live access to NFL Thursday Night Football.