NFL and Amazon Reach One-Year Streaming Deal for About $50 Million – WSJ (Apr 4, 2017)

This is an interesting outcome to this bidding process, with perhaps the most interesting part being the price to be paid by Amazon, which is five times what Twitter paid for the equivalent rights last year. I had wondered if the NFL was going to let the winning broadcaster sell more of its own ads, which would have justified a higher price, but as that doesn’t seem to be the case it looks more likely that the higher price was the result of a bidding war. If I recall correctly, Twitter was said not to have been the highest bidder last time around, so it’s possible both that Amazon (and possibly others) bid more and that the NFL decided to go with the higher bidder this time. From Amazon’s perspective, the deal certainly fits with two existing initiatives: its increasing focus on TV and in particular live TV, and its slow but steady push into advertising. The big issue Amazon has with TV at this point is that its efforts are spread over two very different brands and channels, namely Twitch and Prime. At some point, the aggregation strategy that’s served its Channels business well will likely make sense in live TV too. But broadcasting live TV is a great opportunity to market Amazon hardware products to a captive video audience as well.

via WSJ


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