Yahoo Finance sports reporter Josh Schafer breaks down the outlook for Amazon’s own sports streaming app amid its Thursday Night Football broadcasts and competition with cable providers.
Video Transcript
SEANA SMITH: Amazon could be taking a step further in the sports streaming landscape. There’s a new report out from the Information saying that the tech giant is planning a standalone sports streaming app. Now this app would feature Amazon’s key sports offerings, which include its NFL Thursday Night Football package, also Premier League Soccer matches. Yahoo Finance’s Josh Schafer here on set to discuss this.
And Josh, this is an interesting report from the Information. We don’t really have any more information when it comes to the potential cost of this, the timing of this. We know CEO Andy Jassy has said that sports obviously is a priority or present, really, a unique opportunity here for the company going forward. If they do launch this, I think there’s lots of questions just about cost and why it wouldn’t be folded into what it currently has with Prime.
JOSH SCHAFER: Right, it’s not surprising to see Amazon wants to do more with sports, right? Like you said, we sort of knew that was coming based on Andy Jassy’s comments. And they’re paying a billion dollars for that NFL package. They’re going to want to get a little bit more out of it. What is shocking here would be if it’s separate from the app, a lot of what we’ve heard– I know Laura Martin from Needham stresses to us multiple times from analysts is basically the point of the NFL streaming package is to bring non-Amazon users into the Amazon ecosystem.
If you separate the NFL users from that by just giving them a separate app, I don’t know if you’re getting that benefit. I’m not then going to go on the Amazon Prime Video app and get attracted to “Lord of the Rings” or some other streaming offering that’s on Amazon. So I think that that’s kind of an interesting part that sticks out to me here, Jared, would be is separate– does separating it really help Amazon? Or does it just sort of make it a little bit of a– I don’t know– I guess, different than what they were going for?
JARED BLIKRE: Well, let’s go– let’s take the history of Amazon here. I’ll give you a good example. Remember the Whole Foods purchase? I think that was announced in 2016, 2017. And it just kind of rocked Wall Street because everybody was thinking, wow, does Jeff Bezos really want to get into food here in a big way? Because Jeff Bezos is famous for talking about failing at scale here. He wants to get big and try something out, not just kind of dabble. So if this is a move a bigger move into sports, you know, what’s the ultimate destination? I don’t know. How big could we be thinking here?
JOSH SCHAFER: Yeah, no, I think that’s a good point, Jared, is, too, Amazon is starting to build out something where they could have more of a sports offering, though, right? Their show that they have on top of Thursday Night Football right now is pretty good. They have Andrew Whitworth, Richard Sherman, Brian Fitzpatrick, they have guys that played in the NFL that is pretty good. Are they going to go to a sports platform where they just have a talk show? Is it on in the middle of the day? And do they have more offerings that way, I think could be interesting.
It’s certainly not the only thing we’ve seen– not the only sports streaming app we’ve seen, right? CBS does this. NBC does this. You can get an NBC Sports app on your TV outside of Peacock.
SEANA SMITH: Yeah, and I think the big question here are just exactly the plans, what this could potentially signal in terms of if Amazon wants to make any other sort of strategic acquisitions when it comes to sports content right now, what is already being out there. There’s been certainly a number of rumors of what could be for sale, what certain companies could be spinning off.
But I think also the question is just the appetite for this and whether or not people are going to be willing to pay for another streaming service if they already have Prime, if they want to pay for something separate, and then of course, the cost of it. But I think it does kind of diversify Amazon’s revenue stream. It creates another revenue stream for them specifically focused on sports. We know that Thursday Night Football package costs a lot of money for the company. So we’ll see whether or not this all pays off. I don’t know. It could signal something big. That’s all I’m saying.
JARED BLIKRE: Yes, I agree. Josh Shafer, thanks for stopping by.
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