Amazon Prime last year saw its least amount of streaming occur on April 3, when the championship game of the annual March Madness men’s NCAA basketball tournament took place.
The tidbit is part of a larger set of data Amazon released concerning its year in streaming, but it stands out since Amazon has become a formidable bidder for live sports rights.
Amazon recently wrapped up its first season of streaming Thursday Night Football games for the NFL and last year reports suggested that the company could emerge as a bidder for Premier League soccer.
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According to the Daily Mail, Amazon could be in the mix to win a set of three-year rights from the 2019 season. That would put Amazon in competition with European pay TV operators like Sky and current rights holder BT.
March Madness rights are in no danger of being snatched away from CBS Sports and Turner anytime soon. The companies last year signed an extension for multimedia rights that reaches out until 2032. But the fact that major live sports events like March Madness are having the biggest negative impact on Amazon Prime streaming volumes gives Amazon plenty of motive to continue pursuing deals to put live sports directly on its Prime platform.
Elsewhere in its annual streaming data report, Amazon revealed that, on a per capita basis in the U.S., Prime members in the District of Columbia watched the most Thursday Night Football on Prime Video, followed by those in Washington state and Colorado.
During the 2017 NFL regular season, Amazon offered up more figures regarding its Thursday Night Football streaming, which was offered simultaneously to live broadcasts on CBS, NBC and the NFL Network.
Amazon Prime Video said the Oct. 5 matchup between the New England Patriots and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers reached a total of 1.7 million combined viewers worldwide for the NFL Thursday Night Kickoff pregame show and the game. For the game alone, 1.5 million worldwide viewers initiated a stream on Amazon Prime Video.