Amazon is foraying into live sports streaming with a one-year deal with NFL. The retail giant has bought the rights to stream 10 Thursday night National Football league matches of the 2017 season on its Prime subscription video service.
“Our focus is on bringing customers the best premium video programming, when and how they want to watch it,” Amazon senior VP of business development and entertainment Jeff Blackburn said in a release. He also said that the large audience for NFL will also give Amazon the opportunity to promote its other Prime video content.
Amazon Beats Twitter
While last season’s streaming rights were helmed by Twitter, NFL went for the change due to a more lucrative offer. The exact financials of the deal are still not disclosed, but US media reports that the e-commerce giant has paid 50 million USD in a five-fold jump over last year’s 10 million USD, paid by Twitter.
This clearly leaves a fatal hole in the social media specialist’s strategy to break out of its microblogging niche and resume subscriber and revenue growth. Some advertisers also reported underwhelming response for football games on Twitter, suggesting no real growth in its waning user base from the deal.
Apart from Amazon and Twitter, Facebook and Google’s parent Alphabet also went up for broadcast rights of NFL matches.
How To Watch NFL Live On Amazon?
As you may have guessed by now, only Amazon Prime Video subscribers will get to stream this year’s NFL matches. While this comes as a big disappointment over last year’s Twitter setup, there’s always a choice to switch to cable TV. But, you should know that Prime Video subscription comes with a catch! Once subscribed, you will be getting access to Amazon’s massive content catalogue – TV shows, Movies – and not just live NFL games.
The deal marks one of the many moves that the company has directed against with Netflix and Hulu, both of which have steered clear of Live sports!