Amazon.com Inc.’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) Prime Video service will be showing a select number of National Football League games in the 2017-18 season.
The tech giant announced on Wednesday it reached a deal with the NFL to stream 10 Thursday night games starting this fall. It paid $50 million for the rights, a huge premium versus the $10 million Twitter Inc. (NYSE:TWTR) paid to stream a similar number of games last season.
There’s a reason the price tag was much higher than last year. According to insiders close to negotiations, several big tech players were interested. Twitter wanted to continue the partnership, while Facebook Inc. (NYSE:FB) also sniffed around. Google’s YouTube also reportedly made an offer.
Amazon will offer the games for free to Amazon Prime subscribers around the world.
Like with Twitter’s coverage last year, Amazon will simply stream the feed provided by NBC and CBS, which both broadcast five Thursday night games each. Amazon will then have the right to sell its own ads at certain points of the broadcast.
Although there are certainly more Twitter users than Amazon Prime subscribers, some analysts are saying the Amazon-hosted games could draw a bigger audience. Approximately 300,000 people per minute watched last year’s games on the social media service. Even if a small percentage of Amazon Prime subscribers tune in, they could easily surpass Twitter’s mark a year ago.
Ultimately, Amazon’s hope with this agreement is to pave the way towards a more permanent relationship with the NFL. If it could offer a sports streaming service, it would truly be a game changer.
