ADDISON, Texas—Sports programming has long been the glue that has cemented pay TV subscribers to traditional MVPDs but new Parks Associates research is predicting that the big $1 billion a year NFL deal inked with Amazon Prime Video will increase the service’s subscribers and push its penetration above current level of 47% of all broadband homes.
Parks Associates estimates that 77.3 million US households are Amazon Prime members and that roughly 71% watch Prime Video, totaling nearly 55 million households in Q1 2021.
“In its first all-streaming package, the NFL inked a ten-year agreement with Amazon Prime Video for the streaming rights to fifteen Thursday Night Football games and one pre-season game per year in the US, beginning in 2022,” said Steve Nason, research director, Parks Associates. “By offering live games, streaming services give the significant market of NFL fans a reason to subscribe. As OTT becomes an integral part of its strategy, the NFL is working to secure viewers, and profits, for the next decade, and the Amazon partnership represents an outstanding and unprecedented opportunity to set the stage for success.”
The prediction, which comes from Parks’ “OTT Video Market Tracker” of 10,000 US broadband households, also finds 55% of pay-TV households consider live sports important in their decision to keep their service. Additionally, more than two-thirds of online pay-TV subscribers and 43% of traditional pay-TV subscribers who cancelled their pay-TV service during COVID-19 were likely to re-subscribe following the return of live sports.
Parks also reported that Amazon’s merger with film studio MGM for $8.45 billion would also boost subscriptions and usage of the Prime Video Service.
