As Amazon begins its new media-rights deal with the NBA, the streamer hopes its coverage of the league, as well as the WNBA, leans in to positive storylines instead of more controversial topics that often engulf social media.
“Our approach is really twofold. It’s to celebrate and educate,” Jay Marine, head of Prime Video for U.S. and global sports, said Tuesday at the Front Office Sports Tuned In summit in New York.
“Celebrate the game, celebrate how great these players are,” he said. “The modern player in the NBA—the skill level up and down the bench—is incredible. Sometimes there’s too much weird negativity out there, when really, we should be celebrating how good these guys are. And that’s true, by the way, with the WNBA as well.”
Marine admits it’s hard to ignore negative discussions around the NBA on X (formerly Twitter). “Maybe it’s just part of Twitter,” he said. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s part of the world we live in. As things evolve, there’s always the nostalgia of the way things were—we’re all guilty of that at some time, and possibly the rapid-fire nature of Twitter, and just the media landscape these days, is part of that. But that’s not really our approach.”
Marine isn’t the only sports media executive focused on positive framing. “We do view ourselves as kind of the unpaid marketing arm for all of our [league] partners,” Fox Sports CEO Eric Shanks said at Tuned In. “So we use our best judgment for what we think can make their sports more popular.”
In addition to Amazon focusing on celebrating the NBA and WNBA, the streamer will use technology to bolster its broadcasts like it has done with AI enhancements around its Thursday Night Football NFL package.
“I think it’s easy just to throw stats on a screen. That’s not that hopeful,” Marine said. “The real magic is when you can pull insights that you could never pull before but then be able to explain them easily and quickly because the game is so fast-paced.”
