Amazon Wins Streaming Rights For 10 'Thursday Night Football' Games

Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN's streaming video service will now include live football games. The National Football League and Amazon reached an agreement whereby Amazon will livestream 10 "Thursday Night Football" games.

Amazon paid $50 million for the rights to broadcast the games, which is notably higher than the $10 million Twitter Inc TWTR paid last year for the same one-year rights.

Amazon was bidding against Twitter, Facebook Inc FB, and Alphabet Inc GOOG GOOGL's YouTube to win the new one-year contract. As such, the win could be seen as the biggest victory for the head of Amazon's sports division Jim DeLorenzo.

The Details

Sorts Business Daily said Amazon's deal with the NFL allows it to stream the matches directly on its Amazon Prime video service, which means only Prime members can take advantage. This contrasts to Twitter's deal last year, which was open to anyone with a Twitter membership versus Amazon's yearly membership cost.

Amazon can sell a certain number of ad slots per game (or use it to promote their own products and services) but still needs to stream either CBS or NBC's broadcast of the games including their own commercials.

SBD added that Twitter and NFL were both happy with their relationship last year, but at first glance it appears the decision by the NFL is financial as Amazon likely emerged as the highest bidder.

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