Tampa Bay Buccaneers Tight End Rob Gronkowski (87) celebrates after scoring a touchdown in the first quarter during the Super Bowl LV between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on February 7, 2021, at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, FL .
Cliff Welch | Sportswire icon | Getty Images
Amazon has its sights set on being more than just a website for stocking phone chargers and paper towels and broadcasting the latest episode of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”.
Amazon is in talks with the National Football League to hold Thursday night games exclusively from 2023, CNBC reported on Thursday. As part of the deal, Amazon would be responsible for production costs and the games would still be broadcast on local TV in the home markets of each of the teams at stake.
Winning exclusive streaming rights would mark Amazon’s most aggressive onslaught on sports content. It also has the potential to add even more value to Amazon’s Prime Video platform, while acting as an added advantage to its Prime subscription program, which now has more than 150 million paid members worldwide.
For Amazon, its video streaming service has always served a greater purpose than just being a tool to compete with streaming rivals like Netflix and Hulu.
Prime Video is part of Amazon’s much-touted “steering wheel” of attractive consumer offerings. The idea is that Vídeo Prime attracts more people to be part of its Prime subscription service, which costs US $ 119 per year, generating more engagement and more purchases on the site.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos succinctly explained why Prime Video is a good business model for the company in a 2016 interview with Recode: “From a business point of view for us, we can monetize this content in a way unusual. When we win a Golden Globe, it helps us sell more shoes. “
Sports content and NFL games, in particular, reinforce this value proposition for existing and potential subscribers. Sports content can also attract the increasing share of cable cutters away from other services.
The company already has a service called Amazon Channels, which allows customers to choose the channels they want to subscribe to, such as Starz and HBO, without having to sign up for a program package or sign a contract.
Making a deal with the NFL could make the Amazon Channels service even more persistent, helping you to stand out from similar offers that don’t offer sports.
In the long run, if Amazon were to run NFL games exclusively, which would mean pulling them out of traditional TV, it could serve as a winning selling point for advertisers. Amazon has a vast amount of consumer data, from user interactions with devices linked to its vast Alexa ecosystem to millions of purchases on its e-commerce site.
Amazon not only has visibility into what customers are searching for and buying, but also what ads they click on and whether or not they bought an item after seeing an ad. This way, you can guarantee brands that their ads reach the right people.
Advertising quickly became a key profit engine for Amazon’s business in general. Amazon is expected to be the biggest shareholder among dominant digital ad companies in 2021 and 2022, with ad revenue rising to $ 85.2 billion in 2026, from $ 26.1 billion projected in 2021, according to a Cowen survey released in January.