It started with Thursday Night Football. Now, it’s a full-on global blitz.
Jay Marine, Vice President and Global Head of Prime Video Sports, spoke recently about Amazon’s expanding role in live sport. He was confident. Not promotional. Just matter-of-fact. Which makes sense, because Amazon is no longer trying to prove it belongs in the sports world. It already does.
“This schedule is the best Thursday Night Football schedule we’ve ever seen,” Marine said, referring to this year’s NFL line-up on Prime Video. “It shows you the continued trust the NFL has in us.” That trust includes ten divisional matchups, games on Black Friday and Christmas, and a return to Lambeau Field in week two. Marine says the team is “ecstatic,” and that viewership is up almost 40 percent since Amazon first picked up the TNF rights. The platform is also attracting a younger audience, reportedly eight years younger on average than linear broadcasts.
Amazon has made a habit of investing for the long term. That is exactly what it is doing here. Its new 11-year deal with the NBA includes around a third of the playoff games, as well as play-ins and the in-season tournament. Marine confirmed the company is also expanding its talent line-up with names like Blake Griffin, Candace Parker, Dirk Nowitzki, and Dwyane Wade already signed on. “The chemistry I’m already seeing with that group is just fantastic,” he said.
But Amazon’s main point of difference is in the data. Marine explained how the same technology team that built “Prime Vision” for TNF is now working on the NBA viewing experience too. “We’ve created something called defensive alerts, which highlights players that may blitz,” he said. “This is happening in real time in the broadcast, without latency.” It is one thing to build this kind of feature. It is another to combine it with ex-players and production teams who can interpret and package the data meaningfully. Amazon is doing both.
The same principle applies globally. While rivals often talk about international rights in theory, Amazon is already delivering on them. “We are focused on having the biggest Tier One sports in every country,” Marine said. “We started our entry into sports in the UK with the Premier League around 2017.”
Since then, the company has expanded its sports portfolio to include Champions League football in Germany and Italy, international cricket in India and New Zealand, Copa Football in Brazil, and NHL rights in Canada. Each of these moves builds local credibility and technical experience, which can then feed back into Amazon’s global coverage.
There is still work to do. Amazon is not trying to take over sport, but it is building a structure where it can play a major role in how live sport is delivered and experienced. The technical infrastructure is already there. The global rights are building. The programming is improving. And the tone of Marine’s recent comments suggests the business knows exactly what it wants to do next.
