Overtime opted to stream the inaugural season of its professional basketball league, Overtime Elite, exclusively through the company’s own social platforms.
That’s changing this year.
On Wednesday, OTE announced it has inked its first media rights partnership: a three-year deal with Prime Video. The streamer will broadcast 20 games per season on Friday and Saturday nights — as well as an “unscripted series” about the league starting next spring. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The partnership is an extension of an existing relationship between the two companies — Amazon was one of the investors in Overtime’s Series D funding round, which raised $100 million.
The marriage makes particular sense given that Amazon and Overtime share a mutual stated goal: capitalizing on the youth sports market.
“Like Overtime, we hold a mutual commitment to serving the next generation of sports fans,” Marie Donoghue, vice president of global sports video at Amazon, said in a statement.
- Overtime Elite is a professional league featuring six teams of 16-20-year-old boy’s basketball players who can either receive a six-figure salary — starting at $100,000 — or opt for a “scholarship” to maintain NCAA eligibility.
- It’s landed multiple top prospects, including 2024 No. 1 men’s prospect Naasir Cunningham.
Amazon has made forays into the NFL with an exclusive Thursday Night Football deal, as well as MLB with a 21-game package. It could also be a candidate for top-tier college sports media rights, as well as a contender in the next round of NBA negotiations.
But so far, it hasn’t invested in youth sports to this extent.
