Amazon moves in on UK sports content securing ATP broadcast deal

The ATP, the governing body of professional men’s tennis and operator of the ‘ATP World Tour’ has confirmed that US tech giant Amazon has secured its UK broadcast rights.

Having agreed terms on a reported £10 million per year content deal, Amazon Prime will become the main UK broadcaster of ATP syndicated matches/tournaments, replacing current incumbent Sky Sports. The ATP’s current UK broadcast deal with Sky Sports will end in 2018.

Following a ‘major shake-up’, Sky UK has scrapped its individual sports channels, streamlining its viewer content with new ‘sports-themed’ channels such as Sky Football, Sky F1 and Sky Cricket.

UK business news sources have reported that Sky Sports governance bid significantly lower than Amazon, knowing that the ‘ATP would reject its broadcast renewal.’

The ATP deal represents, Amazon’s first major sports broadcast coup outside of the US market in which the company has secured digital streaming rights for NFL Thursday Night matches.

Moving forward, Amazon Prime will be the UK home of all ATP tournaments and content excluding Tennis’ four ‘Major Grandslams’ (Australian Open, Roland Garros, Wimbledon and the US Open).

This July, Sky UK governance reported that its group annual operating profits had decreased by £87 million to £1.46 billion, due to maintaining costly English Premier League football rights.

Following an executive review of content, Jamie Darroch CEO of Sky stated that his company had ‘walked away’ from bidding on a number of sports broadcasting bids.   


Source: SBC News

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