Amazon Enters The Lucrative Disney-Dominated Cricket Streaming Market In India

Amazon.com, Inc’s AMZN Prime Video has acquired the rights to broadcast cricket matches between India and the New Zealand cricket teams in the cricket-crazy Indian market, Reuters reported Monday.

What Happened: The Jeff Bezos-led company has entered into a deal with the New Zealand Cricket Board, which will allow Prime Video to exclusively stream all men’s and women’s matches played in the island nation beginning late 2021 through the end of the 2025-2026 season, according to Reuters.

“We are excited to add India’s most loved game — cricket — to our content selection for our Prime Video customers, and we are thrilled to work with New Zealand Cricket on this [endeavor] ... and the cricketing rivalry between the two countries has been fantastic,” Amazon Prime Video’s India head Gaurav Gandhi told Reuters.

Why It Matters: Amazon has become the first streaming service in India to secure exclusive rights to broadcast from a major cricketing board, according to India’s Scroll news portal. 

Previously, the retail giant had reportedly shown interest in streaming rights for the Indian Premier League, which was ultimately secured by the Walt Disney Company DIS-owned Hotstar. Facebook Inc FB had also put in an unsuccessful $600 million digital rights bid.

Prime Video and Disney's Hotstar have a 20% market share each of the intensely-competitive Indian video streaming market, while Netflix Inc NFLX controls another 15%, according to Statista.

Netflix Vice President for Business Development in APAC Tony Zameczkowski, in an interview with CNBC, described India as one of its key growth markets with rapidly rising internet penetration.

Amazon has bet big on sports globally — live streaming events like Thursday Night Football, the Premier League, ATP Tour Events, and the U.S. Open tennis.

Price Action: Amazon shares closed nearly 5.1% lower at $3,143.74 on Monday and gained 0.45% in the after-hours session.