As Amazon Prime Video begins its NBA coverage, the streamer is drawing from its experience with Thursday Night Football and NASCAR and has developed a series of on-screen enhancements, including personalized bet tracking through a new deal with FanDuel.
Following a somewhat similar playbook from its four years of NFL coverage, the arrival of the NBA on Amazon will include several elements that lean heavily in to fan interactivity and artificial intelligence. Among them:
- Customizable mulitiview of games happening simultaneously
- Real-time statistics
- On-screen shopping, continuing efforts that have been a particular focus for Black Friday NFL games
Perhaps the most notable addition, however, is the individualized bet tracking. The union between live game coverage and personalized betting information has been tested in many other corners in sports media, both locally and nationally, and it’s also a core part of ESPN’s new direct-to-consumer offering. Initial results from such integrations, however, have been somewhat mixed, in part due to issues between time lags inherent to live streaming—something Amazon aims to address with its low-latency productions.
There won’t be an ability to place bets directly through the NBA game streams on Amazon, but the deal with FanDuel—the U.S. market share leader in sports betting—will include live odds and probabilities and real-time monitoring of bet progressions.
Amazon’s 11-year NBA rights deal will begin with coverage on Oct. 24, and its package will include 67 regular-season games, a Black Friday doubleheader that follows its NFL game, knockout rounds of the Emirates NBA Cup, and the NBA Berlin and London games in January. The streamer also has a set of postseason rights that will include conference finals in 6 of the 11 years.
Within all of that, Jay Marine, head of Prime Video for U.S. and global sports, said there will be a more celebratory tone to Amazon’s coverage.
“Celebrate the game, celebrate how great these players are,” Marine said earlier this month at the Front Office Sports Tuned In summit. “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.”
