Amazon’s football experiment could be pay-per-view game changer

We’re into the home straight ahead of this year’s Business of Football Summit, which kicks off next Wednesday online and the following day in person at London’s Peninsula Hotel.

Over the two days we’ll be looking at many of the challenges and opportunities now facing the world’s most popular sport. The headwinds are clear: media rights growth has stalled, M&A activity has dried up, fans are increasingly unhappy, legal battles are everywhere, and still most clubs are losing money.

But we won’t just be doom-mongering, we’ll be looking for solutions too. Can technology open up new revenue streams? Can stadium upgrades and sponsorship power the next leg of growth? Can financial rules put a lid on spiralling costs? Can women’s football capitalise on its current momentum? And are there lessons football should be learning from elsewhere in the world of sport and business?

To tackle all these questions — and plenty more — we’re bringing together some of the top decision makers in the industry, including the bosses of the Premier League, La Liga, the Bundesliga, CONCACAF, US Soccer and the Women’s Super League. We’ll have the chairs, CEOs and owners of a long list of top clubs, plus some of the best minds in sports finance, law, regulation and player representation.

If you want to join us, there is still time — and Scoreboard subscribers can access a special discount here.

This week we’re looking at Amazon’s attempt to reinvent pay-per-view through the medium of French football. Plus we report from Formula One’s glitzy attempt to launch the season with a bang. Do read on — Josh Noble, Sports Editor

Amazon’s quiet attempt to reinvent pay-per-view

Earlier this week Amazon made an announcement aimed at a pretty niche audience: UK-based fans of French football. The company’s Prime streaming platform will, from this weekend, make a handful of Ligue 1 games available on a pay-per-view basis, enabling AJ Auxerre supporters sitting in Solihull to watch their side host Olympique de Marseille later today for a price of £2.49.

The market for this is likely to be tiny — even French football fans in France have been switching off, so it’s hard to imagine the UK’s French expat community being a worthwhile customer base. Yet the implications of this could be big.

Amazon’s new “pay-per-view market place” looks like a classic pipe-cleaning exercise, as software engineers might call it. By experimenting with a product with low demand, Amazon can test out new tech required to reimagine pay-per-view, and potentially the entire football broadcast model with it. Later on, if it proves successful, it can pitch the same idea to much more popular properties.

Step back and look at the sports media market, at least in Europe. Rising subscriptions prices are leading many fans to cut the cord or dabble with pirated feeds. As a result, TV companies are finding it harder to justify the bumper deals that rights holders have grown accustomed to, unless they jack up the prices again. Meanwhile many sports lovers are forced to pay for lots of bundled content they don’t really care about.

Some executives at clubs and leagues want to find an alternative way of airing games — such as via in-house direct to consumer platforms. But that requires a lot of money, complex technology and serious marketing knowhow. It is a leap into the unknown.

So Amazon is stepping in to outline another way. Leagues could simply start offering individual matches or tournaments for a fixed price without major new investment. Fans then only pay for what they want to see, chiming with Amazon’s cult-like focus on the customer experience.

In short, it’s taking the well-worn pay-per-view model used for big boxing matches and microdosing it for more run of the mill events.

This is not the first time we’ve seen Amazon tinker with the TV model. La Liga was offered to UK viewers as an add-on subscription via Amazon Prime last year (although it has now been bundled into a wider sports package). In doing so, Amazon showed that Prime can be used as a platform to sell lengthy subscriptions direct without all the start-up costs.

There are obvious pitfalls with all this. Many sports are addicted to the lump sum payments that are still — for now — offered by the traditional pay TV companies. They may well prefer to stick with the devil they know — even smaller lump sums are easier to borrow against than an unpredictable stream of money.

And it’s one thing to unbundle different sports — say Formula One and Premier League football. But once you begin to link revenue to individual matches you risk opening a can of worms by making it easier to quantify how much leaguewide income is driven by a handful of clubs. That was, after all, the entire basis of the European Super League, and helps explain why Sky Sports’ version of microdosed pay-per-view — the Now TV Sports day pass — is measured in hours not based on what’s actually on the schedule.

Amazon is always disrupting and many of its experiments ultimately prove shortlived. But when it comes to the future of live sport, there are clear problems on the horizon. If nothing else, Silicon Valley is making sure it is ready to offer a menu of potential solutions.

Formula One meets the Oscars

It’s tradition for Formula One teams to show off their new cars ahead of each season. They usually do it alone. So, this week, the racing league did something different.

At a glitzy ceremony at London’s O2 Arena, F1 gathered team bosses and drivers under one roof to celebrate 75 years of the brand and unveil the cars together rather than individually.

Remember, this is a sport with a deep history of division. Former supremo Bernie Ecclestone took over F1 in a time when teams struggled to think beyond the next race.

But under American owners Liberty Media, even the most individualistic teams have learned that working together can benefit the whole. Just take Netflix’s behind-the-scenes series Drive to Survive, widely credited with sparking the boom times for F1.

Of course, many fans know that the real cars remain a closely guarded secret for now, meaning that the O2 was more a showroom of shells, or liveries to use the racing jargon. That’s how you know your sport is “absolutely minted”, comedian-host Jack Whitehall told the 15,000 fans, in a ceremony more like the Oscars than rubber on the road.

Even better, F1’s YouTube channel peaked at over 1mn viewers, while content-hungry broadcast partners screened the event in 37 territories.

As with Drive to Survive and the F1 Exhibition — an immersive experience for fans that’s heading from London to Amsterdam — Liberty Media is deepening the sport’s links to entertainment and culture. That’s why Jerry Bruckheimer, producer of an upcoming F1 film, was also in attendance.

Those there will have noticed how F1 took over the local area. The Aston Martin F1 team plastered posters of two-time champion Fernando Alonso all over the local underground station. Shops in the mall “activated” their partnerships by putting F1-themed merchandise front and centre. Some fans dressed in full race suits. Others waited in the Intercontinental Hotel, desperate to catch a glimpse of their heroes.

It was a great way to remind fans in F1’s traditional European heartland that the season is about to get started . . . albeit in Australia in the middle of next month. In fact, F1 won’t race in Europe until mid-May in Italy.

That’s why putting on a show closer to home (most teams are based in England) makes sense. An elaborate light show, drummers, DJs, cars. Machine Gun Kelly, Kane Brown, Take That. Aston Martin’s ode to James Bond. Lewis Hamilton, in Ferrari red for the first time, drawing the biggest cheer of the night.

Fine, world champion Max Verstappen probably wasn’t thrilled to be there, so he left the talking to Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner, who was roundly booed by the crowd. Verstappen has form. Remember when he complained about the demands on the drivers ahead of Liberty Media’s first Las Vegas Grand Prix?

You could argue that Liberty Media has put entertainment and content ahead of the sport itself.

Some of us are old enough to remember a 16-race season. Under Liberty Media, the calendar has expanded to 24. That takes a huge toll on all staff, not just the drivers. Promoting the sport is priceless, but growth is not cost-free. Just don’t expect F1 to slow down.

Highlights

• Donald Trump held talks this week with Tiger Woods, the PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan and Saudi sovereign wealth boss Yasir Al-Rumayyan, as the world of professional golf seeks a resolution to the division that sprung from start-up competition LIV Golf.

• Surj Sports Investment, the sporting arm of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, agreed to invest $1bn in DAZN and a new joint venture with the streaming service owned by billionaire Sir Leonard Blavatnik.

• ESPN and Major League Baseball have agreed to terminate their decades-long relationship at the end of this year’s season. According to the Athletic, the MLB was unhappy about what it deemed “minimal coverage” on the network in recent years other than live matches.

• Manchester United swung to a second-quarter loss, as Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s struggles continue at the English football club. But co-owner Avram Glazer says he’s not selling the Red Devils.

• Former football federation chief Luis Rubiales was found guilty of sexually assaulting star player Jenni Hermoso after kissing her without consent during the 2023 World Cup medal ceremony. He was acquitted of coercion charges.

• Chinese electronics maker TCL signed up as a new TOP sponsor for the International Olympic Committee until 2032. The company joins after three Japanese sponsors dropped out of the programme in the months after Paris 2024.

• And finally . . . meet Novak Djokovic’s doppelgänger.

Final Whistle

Goalkeeepers are meant to be a safe pair of hands. Sometimes, they use their feet to embarrassing ends. Take a look here.