Prime Video wants to own Black Friday with full day of sports
Prime Video wants to own Black Friday with full day of sports
The streamer has a big sports day lined up as part of the company’s strategy to keep people in the Amazon ecosystem on Black Friday.
Amazon is clearly no longer satisfied with an annual onslaught of holiday shoppers on Cyber Monday. Black Friday was once left to brick-and-mortar stores, but Amazon is increasingly planting its digital flag in the busiest shopping day of the year, and it’s using live sports on Prime Video to do it. The streamer has announced an all-day lineup of live sports that will (ideally) keep shoppers on Amazon platforms, undoubtedly inundated with deals that the online retailer hopes are too good for viewers to pass up.
Key Details:
- Big names: Prime Video will stream live NBA and NFL games on Black Friday.
- Golf weather: The Skins Game returns to Prime Video on Black Friday, as well.
- More is more: In 2025, Amazon pulled in an estimated $2 billion to $3 billion in revenue on Black Friday alone.
The full day of Black Friday live sports starts on Prime Video at 9 a.m. ET with the streamer’s coverage of The Skins Game. The holiday weekend staple brings golf legends like Fred Couples, Arnold Palmer, and Tiger Woods in a personality-driven competition where the stakes increase on every hole. Once a holiday tradition, the Skins Game had gone dormant, but Prime Video resurrected the event last year to fill out its Black Friday schedule.
Next on the schedule is an NFL clash between the Denver Broncos and Pittsburgh Steelers, two teams who are (for the moment, at least) directly in the thick of the AFC playoff race. That game kicks off at 3 p.m. ET, giving viewers several hours to get some shopping done before switching back to sports.
In the evening, Prime Video will broadcast a pair of Emirates NBA Cup contests. First up, the Miami Heat will take on the defending NBA champion New York Knicks at 7 p.m. ET, and in the nightcap, the Los Angeles Lakers will face the San Antonio Spurs at 9:30 p.m. ET.
It will be a robust sporting lineup all day on Black Friday, and it offers Amazon a fantastic opportunity to synergize its audience by offering its best holiday shopping deals of the season. Although it used to save deals for Cyber Monday, Amazon typically now rolls out its best discounts on Black Friday itself, and the retailer is no doubt counting on sports fans to spend at least a little time shopping in between events.
This will be the second year in a row that Prime Video has made Black Friday a major sports day, and the strategy seemed to pay off quite well in 2025. Industry estimates pegged Amazon’s Black Friday 2025 revenue at between $2 and $3 billion, and overall online spending hit a record $11.8 billion on that day.
Amazon clearly sees an opportunity to capture a bigger share of that revenue this year, which is no doubt part of the reason it’s going all-in on Black Friday with premier sporting events and big-market teams (especially for its basketball games). The company wants to own all aspects of Black Friday, and its combined sports offerings and deals on thousands of gift-worthy items will no doubt be a powerful draw to even the most turkey-hungover of shoppers.
Prime Video
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 Prime Video Channels. Prime Video also offers exclusive live access to NFL Thursday Night Football.