You can watch live cricket on your Amazon Prime Video account soon: Report

The company are 'happy' to assess opportunities coming their way, indicating that more live cricket broadcast rights acquisitions are in the offing

Amazon Prime Video is in the process of assembling a live cricket offering in India, in what is a bid to edge out their competitors, the Financial Times reported.

The American streaming service announced last month their purchase of the broadcast rights to all of New Zealand’s home matches across all formats from 2021-2026.

Both men’s and women’s team matches played in New Zealand will be streamed from the latter stages of 2021, until the end of the 2025-26 cricketing season.

Read | Amazon Prime Video makes live sports foray in India with cricket rights

Gaurav Gandhi, Prime Video’s country manager, described their move to offer live cricket in India -- a country that worships the sport like none other – as one that made sense.

He added that it makes for an “interesting dimension” to their overall offerings, and that they are “happy” to assess opportunities coming their way, indicating that this is possibly the first of many cricket broadcast rights acquisitions.

Presently, it is Disney-owned Star Sports and Disney Plus Hotstar that hold the broadcast and streaming rights for nearly all of India’s international matches and domestic cricket tournaments.

Their rights to the IPL broadcast -- which they beat Sony and Facebook to the crease in 2017 for $2.6 billion – is set to end in 2023, while the rights to Indian National cricket is up for grabs in 2024.

With New Zealand’s matches beginning early in the morning for those living in India, it’s fair to say that it wouldn’t amass viewership figures that will have heads turning.

It is however, a decent start for a giant like Amazon, who own the rights to a handful of Premier League, National Football League (American Football), and US Open fixtures.

Their ‘All in or Nothing’ embed-style docuseries, which started off with the NFL’s Arizona Cardinals, before expanding to other teams and sporting disciplines has largely been viewed as a success.

It has even made its way to India, with the cameras glued to the players and management of the Abhiskek Bachchan-owned Jaipur Pink Panthers during their 2018-19 Pro Kabbadi League campaign.

When it comes to paid subscribers in India though, there’s a fair bit of ground left to cover. Hotstar’s cricket assets have propelled them to a whopping 26.8 million subscribers, according to figures from Media Partners Asia report that FT quoted.

Netflix, for all their strong social media game, only have around 5 million subscribers. Prime Video lies sandwiched in the middle with 17 million subscribers.
Vijay Subramaniam, head of Prime Video’s India content, told FT that the company are serious about their entry into live sports, and are in it for the “long term”.