The stock of Amazon.com, Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) closed at $961.35 gaining 0.52% in yesterday’s trading session. On Friday, the U.S. National Football League said that about 2 million people logged onto Amazon.com. The retailer was carrying out the first livestream of Thursday Night Football and these people looked forward to a thrilling football experience.
Amazon’s kickoff show was watched by almost 1.9 million people and the same number also proceeded to watch the game between the Green Bay Packers and Chicago Bears. Last year, Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) already had with it the online rights and it thus went ahead to digitally streamline the game. About 2.3 million people tuned in, a number that was pretty close to that of Amazon.
Averagely, viewers spend more time on the Amazon broadcast. The provider’s average global audience for at least 30 seconds was 372,000 people. Last year, Twitter recorded about 243,000 for the first game last year and analysts looking at the figure say that the company is headed to the right direction.
Amazon has over the years sought out for mechanisms to help it spend more on retail goods as well as get more people to sign up to its Prime shopping club. It sees the streaming of live sports as a new and integral part that has helped it a huge deal towards the achievement of its set objectives.
One of analyst that has been following on the recent developments opined, “Amazon made a specific offer to be the exclusive licensee of NBA League Pass, but the NBA turned them down to stick with their current many-outlet approach.”
Amazon outlined that it spend about $50 million for the rights and that figure is about five times more compared to what twitter channeled into the same a season ago.
It is indeed true that the most recent development happens to be the first major splash for Amazon in terms of live sports rights. The provider has expressed its interest in the acquisition of more packages and we will be waiting to see how matters unfold.