The NFL Is Coming to Twitch

The NFL has some great news for Twitch viewers this morning! It was announced that the National Football League and Amazon have renewed their partnership to bring 11 Thursday Night Football games back to Amazon Prime Video for the 2018 and 2019 NFL seasons. You may recall that Amazon actually owns Twitch, and this time, Twitch viewers are getting a slice of the pie. Here's what the update from the official NFL website had to say (emphasis ours):

"The Thursday Night Football games will be made available to the over 100 million Amazon Prime members worldwide in over 200 countries and territories, on the Prime Video app for TVs, game consoles, and connected devices, which includes Amazon Fire TV, mobile devices and online. Thursday Night Football on Prime Video will provide members a unique viewing experience complete with interactive features that bring fans closer to the game. The TNF games will also be available to Twitch viewers. The NFL and Amazon will also collaborate on additional NFL content opportunities and enhanced fan viewing experiences, including making the games available on Twitch's interactive social video service."

This isn't the first time that the NFL has experimented with streaming its games on social services. It's obviously not the first time that we've seen the NFL on Amazon Prime Video, and last year the NFL also streamed a handful of games live on Twitter. Now, football fans will have the unique pleasure of watching these games alongside Twitch chat. We don't know how that is going to go. It probably won't go well. At least for its part, Amazon did apparently offer ample viewers:

"Amazon was a tremendous partner for Thursday Night Football in 2017 and as we continue our mission of delivering NFL games to fans whether they watch on television or on digital platforms, we are excited to work with them again for the next two seasons," said Brian Rolapp, Chief Media and Business Officer for the NFL. "Having over 100 million Amazon Prime members provides a massive platform to distribute Thursday Night Football digitally, not only to our fans in the United States but also around the world."

At the time, it remains unclear whether Twitch users will need to have a valid Twitch Prime subscription in order to watch the games. We're assuming that you do not, but we'll update you if we learn otherwise.

Will you guys be watching some Thursday Night Football on Twitch?! I see some dank new memes in our future.