Amazon is seeking to charge $2.8 million from advertisers during the Thursday night National Football League games that it is going to stream live to its Prime customers. As per a Reuters report, the e-commerce giant will be paying $50 million to the NFL to stream the season’s 10 games.
The streaming of NFL games, which is currently one of the most watched events on U.S. television, is another way taken by Amazon to lure customers into subscribing to its $99-per-year Prime service.
The games will also be broadcasted on either CBS Corp or Comcast Corp’s NBC, which we showcasing five games each.
Amazon can sell ten 30-second spots to the advertisers for each game. These spots will run on the live-stream, while local ads are aired on the network TV. Under the terms of the deal offered by Amazon, the buyers will also get to run ads on the e-commerce website throughout the football season, which runs from September to February. National spots run by network broadcasters will also be shown on the live-stream.
However, it’s still unclear, whether the revenue earned by the sale of these ads will balance the expense incurred to buy the rights to stream these events. Also, whether it will be able to sell these spots at the expected pricing. Amazon representative Kristin Mariani, in an email to Reuters, says,
We are offering a range of options at various price points, depending on advertiser objectives.
Taking a look at Amazon’s past records, it doesn’t seem to have cared about the profits. It just dives into the markets to test the waters in the respective region.
Last year, Twitter had paid $10 million to acquire the streaming rights of NFL. Although, according to reports, it had charged more from the advertisers with the cost of ads lying between $2 million and $8 million, that included the games and sports on Batman streaming highlights.
