Amazon has broken Sky and BT’s stranglehold on Premier League football by striking a groundbreaking deal to livestream exclusive coverage of 20 matches per season online.
The US company will exclusively livestream all 10 matches over one bank holiday of Premier League games and another 10 during one midweek fixture programme, for three seasons from 2019.
BT has bought the other remaining rights package, paying £90m per year for exclusive live coverage of 20 midweek Premier League games each season. From August 2019 BT will show 52 live games per season, and Sky 128.
It is the first time that 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 to continue to drive up earnings from media rights.
Amazon has been in negotiations about the two package for months – against rivals including BT – after the completion of the sale of the most valuable TV rights packages in February.
The Premier League was unable to achieve the price it was seeking for the streaming packages, with bidders unable to see how to make a real return on just having two rounds of matches a season.