Amazon beat BT and SKY to streaming rights | Vital Football

Amazon beat BT and SKY to streaming rights

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https://www.theguardian.com/media/2...league-hold-of-sky-and-bt-with-streaming-deal

Amazon breaks Premier League hold of Sky and BT with Prime streaming deal
US online retailer will exclusively livestream 20 matches per season from 2019

Mark Sweney
@marksweney
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Thu 7 Jun 2018 12.09 BST First published on Thu 7 Jun 2018 11.39 BST




It is the first time that packages of live streaming matches have been offered by the Premier League. Photograph: Phil Noble/Reuters

Amazon has broken Sky and BT’s stranglehold on Premier League football by striking a groundbreaking deal to livestream exclusive coverage of 20 matches per season online.

The US company will exclusively livestream all 10 matches over one bank holiday of Premier League games and another 10 during one midweek fixture programme, for three seasons from 2019.

BT has bought the other remaining rights package, paying £90m per year for exclusive live coverage of 20 midweek Premier League games each season. From August 2019 BT will show 52 live games per season, and Sky 128.

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It is the first time that packages of livestreaming matches have been offered by the Premier League, under a strategy introduced by the chief executive, Richard Scudamore.

He has been seeking to lure a deep-pocketed technology company such as Amazon, Facebook, YouTube or Netflix to help to continue to drive up earnings from media rights.

Amazon has been in negotiations about the two package for months – against rivals including BT – after the completion of the sale of the most valuable TV rights packages in February.

The Premier League was unable to achieve the price it was seeking for the streaming packages, with bidders unable to see how to make a real return on just having two rounds of matches a season.



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Global players such as Amazon prefer multi-country or worldwide deals to make the economics work, which is how Netflix can afford to spend £100m per season on shows such as The Crown.
However, the deal adds to Amazon’s burgeoning local sports rights portfolio, with the UK becoming a major focus.
In April, Amazon paid tens of millions of dollars for the exclusive UK rights to the US Open tennis, giving subscribers who pay £79 a year for its Prime Video service access to three of the four grand slams. A deal with Eurosport provides access to the Australian and French Opens.
Amazon also outbid Sky in a £50m deal for the UK rights to the ATP World Tour, the men’s global competition featuring Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray, including the annual final showdown at London’s O2.
The recent deals – which have been struck by the Amazon Europe chief, Jay Marine, and the European Prime Video boss, Alex Green – also include a $130m renewal of non-exclusive livestreaming of NFL games. Earlier this year Facebook struck an exclusive deal to stream some Major League Baseball matches and last year it was frustrated in a $600m bid to secure streaming rights to Indian Premier League cricket matches.
The best five of the seven packages of media rights, allowing live TV coverage of more than 200 matches per season from 2019 to 2022, were sold in February, with Sky and BT once again dividing the spoils. Sky took four of the best five, for £3.75bn and a 14% discount on its current deal. BT secured only one of the prime packs, at £885m, down from its current £960m and for fewer games.
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The rivalry between Sky and BT in recent years has resulted in huge price inflation of 70% at each of the past two auctions. The total cost of the rights has rocketed from £1.78bn for 2010-13 to £5.13bn for 2018-2019.
Subscribers to Amazon’s Prime service, which also includes a wide range of perks such as free delivery of products and access to free music, are hugely valuable as they spend twice as much at Amazon than non-subscribers.
The founder, Jeff Bezos, recently revealed that there are more than 100 million Prime subscribers globally and he is keenly focused on building the value of the service, including through TV content deals. Last year, he ordered executives to find a Game of Thrones-style global hit, resulting in an estimated $1bn (£740m) deal to bring Lord of the Rings to TV.
 
This perhaps gives weight to the claims that Amazon Prime are in the running for the new stadium naming rights ....

We shall see...
 
Just what the punter needs, another subscription.

Can't wait for the day when it all caves in.
 
Something's got to give, the average fan isn't a bottomless pit of money.


I think you'll see more focussed packages offered like Spurs specific packages. But monthly payment streams, affectionately labelled recurring revenues by the receiving company, are the norm now for any service.

What I want to see is the Netflix Sports Channel. Then we can watch where and when we want.
 
I think you'll see more focussed packages offered like Spurs specific packages. But monthly payment streams, affectionately labelled recurring revenues by the receiving company, are the norm now for any service.

What I want to see is the Netflix Sports Channel. Then we can watch where and when we want.



That is the answer, I'm not paying Jack to watch Brighton vs Huddersfield, and wouldn't watch shite games like that for free.
 
We've yet to hit peak revenue, until we do, it really will continue like this for years.



Lol not for me Ex, as 80 says it's got to go to pay for what you actually want not pay for what they decide you watch.

It will crumble under this present force fed diet where you can't watch your own team.
 
I really can't see the the problem in allowing the punter to choose which game to watch , providing they compensate the clubs if there is a considerable loss of revenue .
£80 a month to watch West Brom vStoke , or as Chiv said , Brighton v Huddersfield last season , or the same price to watch our game .
Or do you think even WBA fans wouldn't pay that to watch their team ! Ha ha
 
I really can't see the the problem in allowing the punter to choose which game to watch , providing they compensate the clubs if there is a considerable loss of revenue .
£80 a month to watch West Brom vStoke , or as Chiv said , Brighton v Huddersfield last season , or the same price to watch our game .
Or do you think even WBA fans wouldn't pay that to watch their team ! Ha ha

The problem is simple; the PL is founded on the principle of each club owning one share in the PL, and the base (equitable) payments are based on this premise - change it to pay as fans pay to watch, and the whole league will be come a facsimile of la liga where huge unequal payments are made to the top 2 + lesser large sums for the next two.

It would kill the competitive nature of the PL stone dead.

So, you would say, lets compensate the smaller PL clubs .....but once the revenue streams was directly mirrored by popularity the big 6/7 would never ever let them have it.

Sorry, it's a non starter.
 
As stream quality improves and the average viewers become more educated in finding streams (hearing of old codgers learning how to side load software on fire sticks! Shows how far it's come already) less and less people will justify spending a fortune to do it legitimately. They're already having to pay a fortune to subscribe to multiple sources only to still not be able to see 3pm kick offs. It's at an expense impossible to justify for most football fans... Especially if like me you're not too fussed about other sports.

I'm a fan of sky's day pass. I think more ppv packages make sense for the future. Just pay for the games you watch.