Retail giant Amazon has extended its deal with the German Football League (DFL), giving it domestic rights to seven more top-tier Bundesliga matches and four relegation matches between Bundesliga and second-tier Bundesliga 2.
The deal for rights in Germany and Austria follows on from previous one-match and two-match agreements that Amazon agreed with the league in recent weeks.
The rights are non-exclusive as the DFL has already agreed a deal for the same set of rights with streaming service DAZN. DAZN also initially struck a one-match agreement with the DFL.
Both Amazon Prime Video and DAZN subscribers already had access to the matches in the 2019-20 season through different agreements with international media group Discovery, owner of sports broadcaster Eurosport.
Discovery initially acquired a 45-match package from the DFL, in a four-season deal from 2017-18 to 2020-21, but last year agreed to sell on rights to DAZN in a deal covering the 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons. It also had a distribution agreement with Amazon that gave its customers access to its Eurosport content.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic caused a suspension in the 2019-20 season, the DFL has had to renegotiate all of its domestic contracts. The only contract it was unable to renegotiate was its agreement with Discovery. The media group is seeking to terminate its media-rights contract with the league, utilising a reported ‘special termination’ clause.
This has meant that DAZN and Amazon have had to go directly to the DFL to acquire the rights.
The Bundesliga became the first football league to work with Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing subsidiary of Amazon. The results of this agreement led to the fist use of Bundesliga Match Facts powered by AWS in last night’s matches.
The initial focus of the deal, which is understood to run for at least five years, includes the supply of advanced real-time statistics for viewers during live coverage and highlights clips, providing personalised content on digital platforms and using AWS cloud infrastructure, advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies.
The match facts service gives real-time statistics for Bundesliga matches which are generated live from the official match data and supplied to national and international broadcasters. The service will also be used on the Bundesliga’s platforms and channels, including the Bundesliga app.
The additional match information offered includes “Average Positions” and “Expected Goals”. A SportBusiness interview with DFL chief executive Christian Seifert on the work with AWS can be found here.