Media companies like Sky or DAZN have a new competitor. The Internet giant Amazon scares the industry and puts pressure on them to bid for Bundesliga rights.
Berlin (dpa) - The first games of the Bundesliga have been running on Amazon Prime Video in the past three weeks - and there are many more to come.
The Internet retailer from the USA discovered sports broadcasts for itself and caused a sensation shortly before the auction of the Bundesliga media rights by the German Football League (DFL) starting next Monday.
In mid-May, Amazon managed a surprise coup with the purchase of the TV rights for the Werder-Leverkusen game, and further matches including the four relegation games followed shortly afterwards. Sports business consultant Jochen Lösch believes that the contract is a "brilliant move by the DFL" "to create panic in the market", as he said in a video conference by "nextMedia.Hamburg". Nikolaus von Doetinchem from the sports marketing agency Sportfive commented: "Amazon is always a beautiful specter."
For media companies, a new competitor has emerged from a completely different industry. Sky or DAZN have already had their first painful experiences with them. In England, Amazon bought the rights for 20 games in the Premier League - DAZN went away empty-handed. And for the German market, the US group secured rights to the Champions League in December last year - and Sky got nothing. From 2021/22 to 2023/24, Amazon Prime shows the top game of Tuesday evening.
The internet retailer and cloud service provider is an extremely unpleasant opponent for pure media companies when the DFL will auction the four pay packages at the highest bid in the coming week. One who even benefits from the Corona crisis. In the first quarter of the year alone, Amazon sales rose 26 percent year-on-year to $ 75.5 billion ($ 68.9 billion).
"Amazon can snap a finger and buy everything," said sports business consultant Kay Dammholz, who previously worked at DFL and DAZN. Unlike Sky or DAZN, the retail giant does not have to recoup its sports investments through subscriptions. Amazon wants to retain customers. The sports broadcasts are a means of marketing.
Will Amazon buy the whole Bundesliga next week? This is extremely unlikely. Doetinchem's Sportfive manager said the US company was "very selective." The small number of 16 Champions League games shows that. But one of the Bundesliga pay packages is likely to go to the new players in the market.
Like all other interested parties, Amazon is reluctant to make statements about the auction. "We always look at attractive sports rights for our customers," it said in a recent statement: "We believe that there are more aspects to the topic of live sports than the race for rights and are committed to the goal of seeing quality for fans improve in the long term. "
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