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Amazon's first-ever exclusive NFL broadcast on Thursday checked all the boxes of a typical televised football game: pregame and half-time studio shows, the iconic voice of Al Michaels in the announcing booth, and even new and undeniably hummable theme music.
But one key piece was missing. Due to Amazon's ban on ads promoting wine, beer, and spirits in the US, its TNF broadcast came sans the typical deluge of Bud Light and Michelob Ultra commercials -- presumably prompting lager-swilling football fanatics everywhere to ask: wazzzuuup with this broadcast?
Beer advertisements and NFL broadcasts go together like beer and pretzels. Or beer and cheese. Or beer and bratwurst. Or, well, you get the idea. But across all of its verticals, Amazon dictates "Ad content must not encourage, glamorize, or depict excessive consumption of alcohol," according to its advertising guidelines.
Forgoing the familiar commercials didn't dampen the broadcast's success. The game drew 13 million viewers, according to Nielsen data, and Amazon says another 2.3 million viewers watched the simulcast on Twitch, the popular streaming service it owns (the game was available for free on both platforms). That's slightly off the 16.4 million average audience size of last year's TNF games, which were simulcast by Fox's broadcast network and the NFL Network. Still, Amazon is missing out on the gut-busting sums typically paid by beer advertisers -- which may be a bitter IPA-like sip to swallow given the exorbitant sums it paid for NFL rights:
Designated Ad Driver: Thursday Night Football notwithstanding, prepare to see more promos for alcohol just about everywhere else. Drizly, the alcohol-delivery service purchased by Uber for $1.1 billion last year, is the latest retail brand to launch an in-house ad network. The aptly named Drizly Ads will focus on a highly targeted and data-driven approach for marketers -- likely ditching the typical brand awareness campaigns conducted by alcohol companies. In other words, expect even more hard seltzer and canned cocktail brands to bubble up to the mainstream.
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