![]() That meant Amazon had to be ready a year early. Not long after signing, the NFL added another wrinkle: The league was ending its Thursday night deal with Fox after the 2021 season, a year earlier than expected. paid under the previous deal, but less than what other networks pay for Sunday and Monday timeslots. In March 2021, Amazon agreed to pay about $1.2 billion a year for exclusive rights to “Thursday Night Football”- an 80% increase over what Fox Corp. They shop more than people who aren’t Prime customers. ![]() Prime members pay $139 a year to get faster, free shipping, as well as access to video and music services. “Let’s look at it as a once-in-a-decade opportunity to create appointment viewing for tens of millions of fans.”Īmazon has long invested in entertainment to entice customers to its Prime business. “We said let’s step back and look at it differently,” Donoghue recalled. A near 20-year ESPN veteran hired by Amazon in 2018, she drafted a document that outlined all the reasons that NFL rights would benefit the company and its customers. But it had a harder time convincing major sports leagues to entrust a streaming service with multibillion-dollar media rights.Īs the NFL prepared to seek a new round of media deals, Marie Donoghue, Amazon’s vice president of global sports video, moved to convince her bosses to make a big offer. In the US, Amazon started showing some exclusive New York Yankees games and became the streaming home of soccer’s Seattle Sounders. Amazon snagged rights to stream the US Open tennis tournament in the UK and Ireland and acquired Premier League rights in the UK, as well as the Champions League soccer tournament in the UK, Italy and Germany. Deals there are shorter than in the US, creating more opportunities for newcomers. The company made early headway streaming sports in Europe. But it had never had an NFL package to itself. Amazon had streamed NFL Thursday games that also aired on the NFL Network and Fox. Three of the league’s biggest partners, CBS, NBC and Fox, had all aired Thursday night games and found it hard to make money, in part because the league tended to stick them with less-desirable matchups. ![]() “Thursday Night Football” provided Amazon with an opportunity to get in the big game. But these deals have mostly been for partial packages or in smaller markets. have started to buy their way into this exclusive club, acquiring rights to baseball, soccer, tennis and other sports around the world. Over the last couple of years, Amazon and Apple Inc. With an NFL deal in hand, Amazon is positioned to capture a cut of the $66 billion US TV advertising market. Sports accounted for nearly all of the 100 most-watched broadcasts on TV last year, with professional football alone amounting to 75 of them. While films and TV series have shifted to streaming, people still need cable or satellite TV to watch most live sports. It’s also the last stronghold of the networks. Sponsors flock to the NFL because it’s one of the few places to reach a large live audience-this year’s Super Bowl, for instance, drew an audience of 112 million in the US, about seven times the number who tuned in for soccer’s World Cup final four years earlier. “We’ll look back on this season of Amazon exclusively producing and distributing NFL games as a turning point in sports broadcasting.” “This is an inflection point,” said Daniel Cohen, executive vice president of global media rights consulting at Octagon, a division of the ad giant Interpublic Group of Cos. ![]() If Amazon can attract the millions of viewers and prestige advertisers that football usually draws, other leagues, like the NBA, may be more willing to offer exclusive packages to online heavyweights. It’s the first time a streaming service has obtained exclusive, season-long rights to NFL games in the US, and it presents a big challenge to major networks-like CBS, ESPN, NBC and Fox-that have dominated televised sports for generations. ![]()
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