Amazon Grabs More Live Sports Rights With NASCAR Deal: Why It's Important

Streaming companies continue to enter the race to grab media rights for sports leagues with live sports content still attracting millions of viewers and a top staple for advertisers.

E-commerce company Amazon.com, Inc AMZN was among the streaming companies that have landed sports rights and this week it added another major sport to its arsenal.

What Happened: Motorsports league NASCAR announced new seven-year media rights partners this week with several media companies getting renewal deals.

Fox Sports, a unit of Fox Corporation FOXFOXA, and NBC Sports, a unit of Comcast Corporation CMCSA renewed deals with the league and would be partners on the majority of the live events, with 14 races covered by each of the 38 events. NBC Sports would air the final 14 events of the season, which included the Playoffs and Championship race.

New media partners for NASCAR are Amazon and Warner Bros. Discovery WBD-owned TNT Sports. The two new partners will split rights to 10 midseason races. The two partners also landed exclusive rights to practice and qualifying sessions.

Prime Video is named the first "fully direct-to-consumer partner" for NASCAR in the announcement. Prime Video will stream practice and qualifying content live for the first half of the season with the exception of several key races.

"Our goal was to secure long-term stability with an optimized mix of distribution platforms and innovative partners that would allow us to grow the sport while delivering our product to fans wherever they are — and we achieved that today," NASCAR President Steve Phelps said.

The new deal begins in 2025 and will last through the 2031 season. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed by NASCAR.

"NASCAR is the most popular motorsport in the country, and we can't wait to deliver Cup Series racing to Prime members in the U.S. for the first time," Prime Video Global head of Sports Jay Marine said.

Related Link: Amazon Scores Touchdown With Its Thursday Night Football Viewership

Why It's Important: Grabbing NASCAR rights adds to Amazon's sports deals, which include the popular "Thursday Night Football" National Football games.

Among streaming companies, Amazon has been one of the most aggressive at trying to grab sports rights.

The first 2023 Amazon Thursday Night Football game was watched by 15.05 million people, setting a new record for Amazon which began airing the weekly games last season.

One thing that may have lured NASCAR into signing Amazon as a partner is the statistic of the e-commerce company bringing younger fans to the NFL. The media age of Thursday Night Football viewers was 47, which was seven years younger than other NFL broadcasts.

The company's first six Thursday Night Football games of the 2023 season averaged 12.91 million viewers, which was up 25% from the same time period in the 2022 NFL season.

Amazon is paying $1 billion annually for the rights to Thursday Night Football. The games have contributed to people signing up for Amazon Prime, the company's annual membership that includes free shipping and perks like Prime Video.

Along with landing NASCAR rights, Amazon might have its eyes on landing rights to National Basketball Association games, according to a report. The company could be looking to have an exclusive night of NBA games to stream each week, similar to its NFL deal according to the report.

The NASCAR deal comes after reports emerged Apple Inc AAPL was interested in acquiring the rights to Formula One FWONAFWONK races. Like Amazon, Apple was aggressive with bidding on media rights to sports, landing deals with Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer.

Amazon's strong showing with Thursday Night Football has led to more sports leagues interested in partnering with the e-commerce company and could also lead to more streaming companies hoping for similar success.

Read Next: Apple Could Be Pushing Deeper Into Sports

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