Amazon snags streaming rights to Thursday night NFL games

[TinhWoodhead]

Amazon has been amazingly innovative, especially in the last five years. This is not a good business move unless they have some sort of insider info with the NFL about making Thursday night games more marquee match-ups. Short of that, they're unwatchable and Amazon is going to be surprised about the amount of people who are not willing to stream those games. That said, $50M is a drop in the bucket for that company so there's very low risk involved.

Amazon = river = water = drop in bucket - i get it

 

[tasmlab]

Please Amazon, stream every NFL game.

 

[PatsWickedPissah]

So, watching TNF you'll be funding this!

Bezos is selling $1 billion of Amazon stock a year to fund rocket venture

 

[Va_Pats_Fan]

They have their hands in everything now. From books to other items to music, TV, movies, and now they're opening their own grocery stores around the U.S. where Prime members can walk in with their phone in their pocket, grab stuff on the shelves, and walk out between two scanners that scan all the items they have in the basket and charge it automatically to their Prime accounts. They've been one of the more entrepreneurial companies in the world over the last decade as they've re-tooled their business models. They're an excellent case study for aspiring business men and I learned a lot about them in business school.

I dont know if I fully agree. All the things you mentioned ~still~ lose money. Without the cloud services revenue, Amazon would have lost money Q3/2016 (Amazon without AWS? Online retailer would have posted big loss if not for booming cloud business).

The revenues from AWS allow them to try all of the above, but without those, Amazon may of been on the ropes, and not been able to experiment with those types of business'.

If you are in IT, AWS is where it will "be at" for the next 4 or 5 years.

 

[patchick]

How did Twitter even get it last year? Don't they make no profit?

In related news, Amazon didn't turn its first profit until 2015 -- 21 years after it was founded.

 

[Wheelman]

watched the Pats V Houston game on twitter last year. They literally streamed the same Twitter ad over and over during commercials. very annoying

That's like Crackle streaming service.

They have their hands in everything now. From books to other items to music, TV, movies, and now they're opening their own grocery stores around the U.S. where Prime members can walk in with their phone in their pocket, grab stuff on the shelves, and walk out between two scanners that scan all the items they have in the basket and charge it automatically to their Prime accounts.

I hope they don't get cancer.

 

[Thelonious]

Sure, Bezos looks like a Martian, but it's a hell of a company. (I spend thousands there every year: books, video, groceries, tools, dog food - all the junk we need, or think we need, to make life work.) I wouldn't bet against his making it into something that provides value for the customer and profit for him, which how it's supposed to work.

 

[Thelonious]

In related news, Amazon didn't turn its first profit until 2015 -- 21 years after it was founded.

But it grew, building equity for its owners/investors, and that is a very valuable sort of "profit."

 

[patchick]

But it grew, building equity for its owners/investors, and that is a very valuable sort of "profit."

Absolutely, no criticism was implied. The lack of profits was tied to investments in an astonishingly ambitious vision to go far, far beyond an online bookstore. I just noted it because people tend to lump Amazon with other internet giants like Google and Facebook and assume (wrongly) that it's the same kind of profit fountain.

 

[mosey threetupu]

Amazon has been amazingly innovative, especially in the last five years. This is not a good business move unless they have some sort of insider info with the NFL about making Thursday night games more marquee match-ups. Short of that, they're unwatchable and Amazon is going to be surprised about the amount of people who are not willing to stream those games. That said, $50M is a drop in the bucket for that company so there's very low risk involved.

I bet they will have positive ROI on this. Even though the Thursday night games suck most fans that don't have an Amazon account (ie. me until a few weeks ago) will sign up to stream their home team's game. They'll then get a free delivery trial, find out how easy it is to use and become customers. Just because Amazon has a dominant marketshare doesn't mean there isn't plenty of room for growth. And that doesn't even take into consideration how this will play out from an advertising perspective with their countless clients.

Edit to say - this article just came out today (it's BI so take it for WIW) -Amazon's advertising business could reach $5 billion in revenue in 2018

 

[Simpelton]

oh holy hell yes. I just negotiated Thursdays off and have Amazon Prime.

Yes yes yes.