Amazon.com has bought a package of live broadcasting rights for English Premier League soccer, the first foray by a US technology giant into a top European championship.
Amazon will show two full rounds of matches per season, comprising 20 games, for three years starting in 2019, the Premier League said in a statement Thursday. The games will be available on Amazon Prime Video at no extra cost to users, Amazon said.
While only a handful of games, Amazon’s acquisition is a further sign of its push into live sports broadcasting, a strategy for luring subscribers that threatens UK pay-TV incumbents Sky and BT Group. Amazon previously bought rights to ATP tennis and NFL football.
“We are always looking to add more value to Prime,” Jay Marine, vice president of Amazon Prime Video in Europe, said in a statement. “The Premier League is the most watched sports league in the world.”
The rest of the live UK broadcasting rights to Premier League soccer are shared between Sky and BT. — Reported by Joe Mayes, with assistance from Thomas Seal and David Hellier, (c) 2018 Bloomberg LP