For most marketers, cricket is the road to the heart of India. Amazon Prime Video is the latest to go this route. The streaming platform has announced its first foray into live sport in India, acquiring the rights to Indian territory for New Zealand Cricket until the 2025-26 season. The deal has the potential to cause major upheaval in India's sports streaming ecosystem, currently dominated by Star Network and Disney-owned Sony. Analysts already believe that it is only a matter of time before Amazon starts bidding on more lucrative and popular ICC and BCCI events (such as the IPL) when its next round of auctions rolls around.
Amazon Prime and New Zealand cricket deal
Amazon Prime Video became the first streaming service in India to get exclusive rights to live cricket from a major cricket council. The deal covers all international matches to be played in New Zealand until the end of the 2025-2026 season, including Team India's tour of New Zealand in early 2022, and a second tour with upcoming dates. announced later. Prime Video will be the only streaming destination in India for all international cricket matches played in New Zealand, including men's and women's cricket, via ODI, T20 and Tests. Rights for the 2020-2021 season beginning later this month are expected to be unionized, Amazon said in a press release. Gaurav Gandhi, Country Director and General Manager of Amazon Prime Video, said: “We are delighted to add India's most beloved game, cricket, to our selection of content for our Prime Video customers, and we are delighted to be working with New Zealand Cricket in this company. because they have a strong, passionate and highly regarded cricket team, and the cricket rivalry between the two countries has been fantastic. We are pleased to make this collaboration with New Zealand Cricket our first live sports offering in India and we are sure our Prime members will be delighted with this initiative." David White, Managing Director of New Zealand Cricket, said: “This partnership with Amazon Prime Video is huge for NZC; we are delighted and proud to be associated with such a famous and successful brand. As we said before, the future of live sports is streaming and in Amazon Prime Video we have a partner at the center of the industry; innovative, trendsetter, and renowned for putting fans and subscribers first. " "India has always been important to the NZC audience; no other country follows cricket like India, so it's exciting to announce this deal with India's largest broadcaster," he added.
Amazon Prime Video Sports Line
The Indian Territory New Zealand cricket rights package is the latest in Prime Video's growing lineup of live sports around the world, including Thursday Night Football, Premier League and ATP Tour events. , WTA, US Open (tennis), UEFA Champions League, Autumn Nations Cup (rugby) and Seattle Sounders FC. Amazon Prime members can also subscribe to streaming services like Eurosport, MLB.TV, NBA League Pass, and PGA TOUR LIVE through their Prime Video channels. This is in addition to a selection of popular documentaries including 'The Test: A New Era for Team Australia', which follows the Australia men's cricket team through the 2018/2019 season, and Amazon Original All or Nothing. , winner of an Emmy, among many others. .
Can Amazon Prime Affect India's Sports Broadcasting Ecosystem?
In fact, Amazon Prime made a deal with New Zealand Cricket after Star Network was unable to renew their deal after the last tour of India in February this year. The Disney-owned platform is the one that dominates the cricket streaming/streaming segment in these regions. It has the rights to the Indian Premier League (IPL) until 2022. Star also has the right to air/broadcast matches of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and the International Cricket Council (ICC) until 'in the season 2022-23. . Star and Sony have duopolized each other in the field, leading to claims that they wield power beyond their knowledge. "The arrival of a big-money player like Amazon, if not nothing, will at least keep Star and Sony in check," said one digital broadcasting market analyst. The belief here is that Amazon, which adds sporting events to its streaming slate, will bid for the rights to BCCI, ICC events in the future. Of course, this isn't the first time a streaming/digital player has taken the bold step of venturing into the live sports segment. Facebook already owns the broadcasting rights of the popular La Liga (Spanish soccer league) in India. Facebook also tried but failed to secure the IPL broadcast rights for the 2018-2022 season. He was willing to invest Rs 3.900 crore. But he was bitten by Star Network. The problem here is that Star Sports has Disney+ Hotstar for streaming, but still has your regular sports TV channels to back it up. (Today, TV and digital rights are mainly offered as separate offerings.) Amazon Prime, as we said, will unionize its rights at least for this season to another television player, it is said.