Amazon focuses on live sport: the streaming giant on the hunt for profit

Luca Fontana

27.1.2025

Translation: machine translated

The race for the streaming throne is entering the next round. Netflix is leading, Disney is fighting - and Amazon? They are now betting on the biggest sports stage in the world. A risky manoeuvre begins.

Amazon Prime Video is taking a new direction: away from expensive in-house productions and towards live sport. This is reported by The Information, quoted by the international news agency Reuters.

Disney showed last year just how difficult it is to assert itself as a streaming service alongside Netflix. Despite the appeal of brands such as Marvel and "Star Wars", it took almost ten years for Disney+ to finally become profitable:

Amazon has to turn things around. Somehow.

Netflix as a role model - and warning

A look at competitor Netflix shows why Amazon is now changing course. Two years ago, the Californian streaming giant saw its subscriber numbers fall for the first time - a shock for the otherwise successful company.

Netflix then embarked on a radical change of course: live sports. However, with a targeted strategy: Netflix wants to focus less on long-term and extremely expensive broadcasting rights, for example football, and more on individual, major events with global appeal.

Amazon goes on the offensive

Amazon wants to learn from these developments. The new Prime Video sports strategy will continue to rely on expensive sports licences, but will also increasingly focus on individual events. But that's not all. The strategy will now be based on two pillars:

1. Exclusive live sport
2. Targeted advertising

Amazon already holds major sports rights with event character, including the Thursday night NFL game in the USA. The company wants to massively expand this offering for future profitability.

Amazon reportedly became part of a 77 billion dollar deal that the NBA concluded with ESPN, NBCUniversal and Amazon. Amazon secured an exclusive package of streaming rights for selected basketball games. This will cost Amazon almost two billion a year - over the next eleven years.

Live sport as advertising gold: Amazon's strategy for higher revenues

However, the real recipe for success lies not only in the content, but also in the sources of revenue that live sport brings with it: targeted advertising. Amazon wants to perfectly combine the classic sports spectacle - beer, nachos and fast food - with customised advertisements. For example, a viewer watching an NFL game could be targeted with ads for jerseys of their favourite team or a discount on delivery services.

Or as it is called in the trade: targeted advertising. After all, Amazon is sitting on a veritable treasure trove of data that makes it possible to display customised adverts to users. The online retailer expects the combination of real-time sports content and targeted advertising to generate significantly higher advertising revenue, which in turn would reduce its dependence on pure subscription fees. Another thing that Amazon is increasingly looking to copy from Netflix.

The rocky road to profitability

CEO Andy Jassy has a clear goal: Prime Video should be profitable by the end of 2025. To achieve this, Amazon is building on the strengths of its ecosystem. Live sport should not only attract new subscribers, but also encourage existing Prime members to use the service more intensively. After all, millions of people pay the Prime fee primarily for faster deliveries - the company hopes to keep them glued to the screen with exclusive sports offers.

It remains to be seen whether Amazon will be successful in the long term. But one thing is certain: the streaming world is no longer just about series and films. The battle for market share is now being fought on many playing fields - including cloud gaming. And Amazon is ready to go into overtime.

Luca Fontana

Senior Editor

Luca.Fontana@digitecgalaxus.ch

I write about technology as if it were cinema, and about films as if they were real life. Between bits and blockbusters, I’m after stories that move people, not just generate clicks. And yes – sometimes I listen to film scores louder than I probably should.

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