Amazon has snapped up the rights to live broadcast 20 Premier League matches a year for three seasons from 2019/20 to 2021/22. They have exclusive rights to two full fixture rounds – the first December midweek round and the festive Bank Holiday round – featuring live coverage of every Premier League team. This will be the first time a full round of Premier League fixtures will be broadcast live in the UK. In addition, Prime members will be able to watch weekly highlights of all Premier League matches throughout the season.
The Premier League joins Prime Video’s growing stable of live sports, including US Open Tennis, ATP World Tour Tennis events and NFL games, all currently available to watch on Prime Video in the UK at no extra cost to a Prime membership.
The Premier League is the most-watched sports league in the world and so represents a major win for Amazon, although not quite such good news for football fans who, if they want to watch all the live Premier League matches, will now have to subscribe to three services – Sky Sports, BT Sports and now Amazon Prime Video. We’ve broken down the full split of matches between the three broadcasters at the foot of this article.
“Amazon is an exciting new partner for the Premier League and we are very pleased they have chosen to invest in these rights. Prime Video will be an excellent service on which fans can consume live Premier League football – including for the first time in the UK a full round of matches – and we look forward to working with them from season 2019/20 onwards.”
– Premier League Executive Chairman Richard Scudamore
You can expect Amazon to make the most of their live Premier League matches streaming deal, so watch for them to heavily promote Prime with the hook of Prime Video as well as the shopping benefits for subscribers as well as football related themes when the season starts.
For merchants, this should be good news if it tempts football fans to sign up for Amazon Prime. Those who will benefit most will be merchants who’s products are Prime Eligible, whether this be through Amazon FBA or Seller Fulfilled Prime.
Broadcast rights for UK live Premier League matches
In the UK, the rights consist of 200 live Premier League matches per season split into seven packages. For the three seasons 2019/20 to 2021/22 the split will be:
Sky Sports
128 matches per season consisting of:
Package B: 32 matches at Saturday 17:30
Package C: 24 matches at Sunday 14:00 and eight matches at Saturday 19:45
Package D: 32 matches at Sunday 16:30
Package E: 24 matches at Monday 20:00 or Friday 19:30–20:00 and eight matches at Sunday 14:00
BT Sport
52 matches per season consisting of
Package A: 32 matches at Saturday 12:30
Package G: 15 matches from two midweek fixture programmes and five matches from the split weekend
Amazon Prime Video
Package F: 20 matches per season from one Bank Holiday and one midweek fixture programme
One Response
Netf!ix has 8.9 million subscribers in the U.K and Amazon has 4.6 million prime members and there are 20 million households in Britain. Both Amazon and Netflix have plenty of room to still grow in Britain. The football rights should help Amazon and the small package was a good way for Amazon to test the waters though the production costs will be quite high maybe that can be offset with some advertising revenue.