Amazon, after big hire, experimenting with sports media strategy: interview

NEW YORK (Reuters) – When Amazon.com Chief Executive Jeff Bezos was spotted schmoozing in NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s booth during the Super Bowl in February, the media world exploded with anticipation about Amazon’s imminent domination of sports media.

But two years after first dabbling in live sports streaming, Amazon has yet to settle on a strategy as it continues to experiment and analyze consumer behavior, Marie Donoghue, Vice President of Global Sports Video, told Reuters.

“We’re literally at day one in sports, so we’re learning and experimenting,” Donoghue said in New York this week in her first interview after she took over the sports media division of the world’s largest online retailer last fall.

The arrival of Donoghue, a nearly twenty-year veteran of Walt Disney Co’s ESPN cable network and who was responsible for shows including the ‘30 for 30’ series and ‘OJ: Made in America,’ signaled a new level of seriousness to Amazon’s pursuit of live sports.

While the real impact of her arrival remains to be seen, that hasn’t stopped chatter of a big tech takeover of live sports as Amazon, Facebook Inc (FB.O), Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) and Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) YouTube’s threaten to loosen TV’s grip on one of the last remaining reasons to pay for live television.

Tech companies and startup digital platforms – like DAZN, which in October agreed to pay boxing champion Canelo Alvarez a minimum of $365 million for five years, the richest contract in sports history – are also seen driving up the cost of media rights when major contracts start coming up for renewal in 2021.

Will Amazon lead the pack in pursuing streaming rights for live sports? “We don’t talk about specific rights … as a matter of course, but also because we’re just not sure yet,” Donoghue said.

Since 2017, Amazon…