Ta-ta, Twitter.
The one-year Thursday Night Football streaming arrangement between the NFL and the 140-character-or-less social-media platform has been deleted. Amazon now steps in, at a considerable markup.
Via multiple reports, Amazon has secured the 10-game package for $50 million. Twitter paid $10 million in 2016.
The games will be available only to Amazon Prime subscribers, the $99-per-year service that provides a wide range of shopping benefits and streaming video.
Via John Ourand of SportsBusiness Journal, Amazon wanted to get the deal done now in order to sell advertising around it. While this may not mean that Amazon will be replacing the advertising that comes from the NBC and CBS broadcasts, Amazon can do plenty of creative things through its platform, including but not limited to the installation of buttons that allow the products advertised during the game to be bought immediately.
The Amazon experiment will be far more intriguing than the one-year Twitter dalliance. In the next wave of TV rights deals, Amazon could emerge as one of the league’s major partners, given its ability to deliver unique (and thus more effective) advertising based on the shopping habits of the user.
In particular, this would allow Amazon to identify and market to people with significant disposable income, allowing Amazon to sell advertising to companies with high-priced products that most people wouldn’t be able to afford.