Amazon to live-stream EPL matches in online shake-up

London

AMAZON has secured the rights to show English Premier League (EPL) football matches in a pioneering move for the online sector in the bidding war for sports events.

The global online retailer from the US will show 20 matches a season for three years in the UK, starting from the 2019/20 season, the league said on Thursday.

Amazon's entry breaks up the recent dominance by Sky and BT Sport of lucrative EPL TV rights in a first for the online sector that is threatening to shake up the traditional sports rights market.

The EPL gave no details of the scheduling, but the BBC reported that Amazon will exclusively live-stream all 10 matches over a bank holiday period and another 10 during the first mid-week fixture programme in December.

The English football season takes place over nine months from August to May every year.

The games will only be available to UK subscribers of Amazon Prime, which is the online seller's premium service available for a fee. Memberships costs £79 (S$141) a year or £7.99 a month.

The Premier League's executive chairman Richard Scudamore described Amazon as an "exciting new partner".

Sky and BT Sport will still show the vast majority of 'live' matches, with 128 and 52 - BT having been awarded the other package up for grabs on Thursday of 20 games at a reported cost of £90 million - respectively.

"Sky and BT are established Premier League partners and provide first-rate coverage of the competition through their live-match broadcasts and comprehensive programming," said Mr Scudamore.

Amazon, which started as an online retailer, has built up an increasingly impressive sports portfolio in both the UK and the US, including US Open tennis, ATP World Tour Tennis events - where they outbid Sky for UK rights by offering £50 million - and NFL games.

Mr Scudamore will be delighted as it was his idea to lure either Amazon or their rivals such as Facebook and YouTube into bidding for the rights.

Indeed, the 58-year-old first unveiled his commercial coup, then announced he would step down after almost two decades in charge - first as chief executive and then in his present role - a few hours later.

Although a figure has not been released as to how much Amazon - which has been in talks over the past couple of months over the package - is paying, the Guardian reported that the EPL did not get the price they were seeking as the companies bidding didn't see a deal for just two rounds of matches as a huge money-maker.

The league divides its rights up into bundles of possible games. In February, Sky Sports paid £3.58 billion for four packages, while BT Sport spent £295 million on another package.

In a separate announcement, the EPL also agreed that there would be a change in the distribution of money gained from the foreign broadcast deal.

The big six clubs - Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur - managed to get the necessary 14 votes out of the 20 to agree that from the 2019/20 season, any increase in the current international rights package will be distributed according to league position. AFP