SVG Sit-Down: Prime Video's Jared Stacy on Iterative Change in Season 2 of Thursday Night Football Analytics, data visualization help differentiate Prime Video from other NFL coverage By Jason Dachman Thursday, September 14, 2023 - 1:52 pm
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Amazon Prime Video kicks officially kicks off the second season of its exclusive Thursday Night Football deal tonight with a Vikings-Eagles faceoff in Philadelphia. Prime Video will roll out a bunch of innovations for its 16-game NFL regular-season slate, including producing and delivering all games in 1080p HDR; an enhanced Prime Vision alternative stream that will feature Prime Targets, Defensive Alerts, Fourth Down Territory, and Field Goal Target Zone data-visualizations; and AI-powered interactive features like X-Ray, Rapid Recaps, and Key Moments.
Director of Live Sports Production Jared Stacy, who leads the charge on all of Prime Video's live-production efforts around the globe, including Thursday Night Football, sat down with SVG ahead of the opener to discuss what his team learned in Year 1, the thinking behind its onsite studio show, how Amazon will boost the TNF viewing experience this year, why 1080p HDR makes a difference, the evolution of Prime Vision and TNF's other alternative presentations, what new producer Mark Teitelman brings to the show, what fans can expect from the first ever Black Friday NFL game, TNF's enhanced schedule this season, and much more.
Amazon's Jared Stacy: There's a subset of the audience that craves more information and deeper presentations of analytics. That's where we're going to show what goes into the decisions out on the field.
What key learnings from last season do you plan to leverage for Year 2 of the exclusive NFL rights deal?
Last year, there were so many unknowns; there were even unknown unknowns. But I think our biggest learning was that we have an amazing group of people working on this, [comprising] experts in their fields - whether on screen or behind the camera. Now that we're in Year 2, that team is committed to growing it and innovating and pushing each other to make each year better and to make each week better. We are not afraid to fail and not afraid to try new things. That's the culture we have established, and I'm very proud of that.
How do feel the Prime onsite studio show performed and evolved during that first year? And what can we expect this year?
When you look at our pre- and postgame show, we make a conscious decision to put people on television that hadn't necessarily been there before, like Richard [Sherman] and Ryan [Fitzpatrick] and [Andrew Whitworth] and then surrounding them with veterans like Charissa [Thompson] and Tony [Gonzalez]. Seeing that team gel and develop chemistry with each other and the audience in such a short time was great. I think it helped create an identity for TNF on Prime. It's a fun group, it's an authentic group, it's a curious group. Nobody takes themselves too seriously, but all of them know football as well as anybody on the planet. They're a fun group for the audience to hang out with on Thursday nights and a fun group to hang out with behind the scenes, [which] translates on screen.
How would you rate the streaming/viewing experience for TNF on Prime in Year 1 of the rights deal? And how are you looking to boost that experience this season?
I was impressed by our ability to deliver at scale. There were a lot of questions around whether the streaming [ecosystem] could handle an audience this big. The audience came and found us, so the pressure was on. Thankfully, we had brilliant production and tech people that were ready to handle an audience the size of an NFL audience and put in a lot of hard work to get that done. I think everyone at Amazon was really pleased with the way the platform delivered.
There were also some phenomenal product features that will continue to grow this year. We're excited about some of the developments on Prime Vision, and we want to go deeper and innovate on that Prime Vision alternate presentation. We will roll out some new features that are AI- and machine-learning-driven. We spent a lot of time after the season talking to the fans that enjoyed that feed to try to get a sense of what they liked, what they didn't like, and what they would like to see more of. I think you're going to see some interesting on-screen visualizations this year, building on what we did last year.
How do you believe delivering games in 1080p HDR this year will benefit the viewer? Since you are not limited by the same cable/broadcast ecosystem constraints of other primetime NFL rightsholders, does your team expect TNF will offer the best HDR viewing experience to date for NFL viewers?
We received a lot of compliments on our picture quality last year, which was 1080p SDR. So we're excited to raise the bar in 2023 as we continually work to improve the viewing experience for fans. Producing and delivering in native HDR, with no need to upconvert the signal along the way or navigate through legacy broadcast affiliates or cable set-top boxes, provides incredible depth to our images, greater contrast between light and dark, and more-vivid colors - especially in primetime under the lights. TNF will be the most broadly distributed NFL game in native 1080p HDR this season, and we believe that fans will definitely notice and enjoy the upgrade.
Do you see Prime Vision and the work you're doing around analytics and data visualization as a differentiator for TNF on Prime compared with other NFL rightsholders' broadcasts?
It's definitely a priority for us, but we always like to strike a balance. Everything we do is built to add to the storytelling. One of the benefits of having optionality [with multipl
