Amazon Bags English Premier League Prime Streaming Deal

Amazon has broken Sky and BT’s stranglehold on Premier League football by striking a groundbreaking deal to livestream exclusive coverage of 20 matches a season online.

The US company will exclusively show all 10 matches over one bank holiday and another 10 during one midweek fixture programme, for three seasons from 2019. The value of the deal was not disclosed.

Amazon said the matches would be available to UK Prime Video members at no extra cost to their existing subscription.

BT has bought the other remaining rights package, paying £90m over three years for exclusive live coverage of 20 midweek Premier League games a season. From August 2019, BT will show 52 live games a season at a cost of £975m over three years, and Sky 128, paying £3.75bn.

It is the first time packages of livestreaming matches have been offered by the Premier League, under a strategy introduced by the chief executive, Richard Scudamore. He has been seeking to lure a deep-pocketed technology company such as Amazon, Facebook, YouTube or Netflix to help continue to drive up earnings from media rights.