If you were hoping to watch the NFL Wild Card Weekend playoff game between the Green Bay Packers and the Chicago Bears, and you were not already a member of Amazon Prime, you were out of luck. 

Amazon paid a reported $150 million for the rights to that one playoff game this year. This is on top of the $100 million it paid for exclusive rights to a Black Friday game and the $1 billion a year to stream Thursday Night Football games throughout the season. 

In an era of increasingly fragmented audiences, it is easy to understand why media giants such as Amazon and Netflix are willing to pay a premium for NFL rights. According to Nielsen, 40 of the top 50 television broadcasts in 2024 were NFL games, with college football accounting for two more. The only other programs to crack the top tier were the........

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