Amazon buys rights to exclusively livestream 20 Premier League football matches per season for three seasons starting from 2019
Mark Sweney / The Guardian :
Context & Ripple Effects
This deal is the payoff to a pursuit that began two years earlier, when sources reported Amazon scouting a wide range of sports rights — French Open tennis and professional rugby among them — for Prime Video. Landing 20 exclusive Premier League matches per season from 2019 is its first major live-football foothold in the UK's most expensive rights market.
The arc that follows makes this entry point notable: Amazon later used the package as a funnel, streaming four Premier League games free on Twitch in 2020, while Apple weighed bidding for English soccer rights in 2023 — before Amazon failed to renew in Sky and TNT's new £6.7B UK deal from 2025/26.
First-order effects
- Prime Video gains its first exclusive live Premier League package in the UK, putting Amazon in direct competition with incumbent broadcasters Sky and BT for the league's audience.
Second-order effects
- Amazon's entry validates tech platforms as credible bidders, prompting Apple to explore English soccer rights two years later and pushing traditional broadcasters to defend packages at auction.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, live sports rights become rotational inventory for streamers rather than permanent assets — Amazon's eventual non-renewal shows tech buyers will enter, experiment, and exit when the price no longer serves subscriber acquisition.
The trend: Live sports rights are migrating from broadcast incumbents to streaming platforms on a trial-and-renewal basis, with each auction resetting who pays for reach into Prime- and Apple-scale subscriber bases.