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Amazon is bulking up the live sport offering on its streaming platform. Last year it paid $100 million for the right to broadcast a Black Friday NFL game - a first for any broadcaster. That happened on 24 November this year, and it received mixed reviews.
The broadcast team at Amazon developed a more in-depth array of statistics on each player during the match, which sounds cool. Another feature was scannable QR codes during adverts, allowing customers to directly buy match-day specials by scanning their TV screen with a phone.
This week, Amazon's sporting division was in the news again when they announced a deal to broadcast five NASCAR races a year, for 7 years. Fox will broadcast the first 14 races, Amazon the next five, then Warner Bros. Discovery will get five and the season will be capped off with NBC Sports having the final 14 races. Um, okay. We are very lucky to have SuperSport in South Africa, they always have everything!
Amazon uses live sports to draw in customers for its Prime subscription service, which adds to online store sales. They also sell ads during the broadcast, for partners that sell products on its massive e-retail store. I see the company bidding for other sporting events in the future.
