A group of young adults sitting on a couch cheering on their soccer team.

Amazon Reportedly Developing a Standalone Sports App

This could potentially attract new subscribers and make sports content easier to find on Prime Video and FreeVee.

Amazon is reportedly working on a standalone app for watching live sports and other sports content, says TechCrunch, quoting The Information as their source. If this report is true, a standalone sports app for sports content unique to Amazon (e.g., Prime Video and FreeVee) could be a way to attract and retain new subscribers, making it easier for sports fans to find what they’re looking for.

This year, Amazon secured the rights to NFL’s Thursday Night Football for the 2022 season, inking a 10-year deal. The deal, which is estimated to cost Amazon about $1 billion a year, includes one pre-season and 15 regular season games each year. Prime Video is also presenting pre-game, half-time, and post-game shows during the Thursday Night Football timeslot.

The partnership between Amazon and the NFL appears to be a success already. In their third-quarter earnings news release, Amazon said they had 15 million viewers for the first Thursday night of the NFL season. The company also said they had a record number of Prime signups for a three-hour period prior to the first Thursday night game of the NFL season.

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In addition to Thursday Night Football, Amazon also broadcast live sports from Europe including new seasons of UEFA Champions League soccer in Germany and Italy, Ligue 1 in France, and exclusive coverage of U.S. Open tennis in the U.K.

In November, Amazon announced the launch of Sports Talk on Prime Video, 12 hours of daily sports talk on weekdays, says TechCrunch. Live from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern, Sports Talk includes shows like Bonjour, The Backup Plan, The Power Hour, Game Breakers, From the Desk of Master T, The Cari Champion Show and Greatest Hour of All Time, a daily highlights show.

On the Sports Talk dashboard, viewers can access specific sports programming including content from the NFL, NBA, MLB, WNBA, One Championship, Overtime Elite and soccer. After the 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. time slot has played out, Prime Video will re-broadcast the day’s programming.

Amazon has not confirmed that they are working on an app, so no details about a proposed launch date are known. It is also not known if a standalone sports app would be included with a Prime membership, if there would be a separate price to subscribe to the app, or if it would be ad-supported.

Four fists in the area with a fifth hand holding a smartphone with a blank screen, indicating sports fans watching a standalone sports app.
Source: Envato Elements

Insider Take

Other streamers are finding that live and exclusive content for the major sports leagues are attracting new audiences to their subscription services. This can bring in additional revenue to help cover their costs for the exclusive rights, and also provide added value for new and existing subscribers. For example, with different streaming subscription services offering different games (e.g., YouTube now owns the rights to Sunday Night Football starting in the fall of 2023), it is hard to know where to find what games. A standalone sports app would make it much easier to find live sports content.

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