Amazon’s smash-and-grab on cricket is likely to be a sign of things to come

For once both free-to-air and pay TV broadcasters are on the same side on an anti-siphoning issue: Foxtel, Nine, Ten, Seven and the regional TV networks have all been gazumped on key sporting rights by Amazon and its Prime Video streaming service.

Amazon has grabbed from the International Cricket Council (ICC) the Australian TV rights for the next four years to nearly 450 games of cricket including, in 2025, the women’s one-day international World Cup that will be played in India and, in 2027, Australia’s defence of the men’s one-day international World Cup it won in India last month.

It’s the kind of swoop that Rupert Murdoch used to make while building his global pay TV empire — paying record prices for sports such as NFL and soccer and using them as cornerstone assets to attract mass subscribers. That was stymied in Australia by anti-siphoning rules that forced sports rights holders to sell only to free-to-air broadcasters. News Corp tried to get around the list in the 1990s with its failed Super League raid, and helped set up a bespoke provincial rugby competition for pay TV in what was originally the Super 12 competition.

None of the rights bought by Amazon fall under the existing anti-siphoning list, which focuses on cricket matches played in Australia and Ashes Tests played in England.

On Monday, Foxtel CEO Patrick Delany mused about how this summer would be quiet without India and England touring. Delany was obviously worried about how to keep subscriber numbers buoyant for the company’s only real success story since the days of Kim Williams: its sports streaming service. The cricket menu this summer is fairly unappetising, with three Tests against Pakistan and then two against the West Indies. (Crikey is old enough and nostalgic enough to remember when a five-Test, multi-one-day match Windies tour was millions of Australians’ idea of a perfect summer.)

Amazon has bought the rights to the men’s World Cup, the women’s World Cup, T20 World Cups, the ICC Champions Trophy, Under-19s and the 2025 World Test championship final (which Australia won for the first time in England this year). Australia and New Zealand won’t jointly host a major ICC tournament until 2028 — the T20 cricket World Cup — which falls outside the timeframe of this rights agreement, and which is on the anti-siphoning list by virtue of its location.

But the next T20 tip-and-run festival is due to be held in the Caribbean and the US next June, meaning it is not on the list, and nor is the women’s World Cup in India or the 2027 World Cup which will be held in southern Africa. That means cricket fans will be able to watch Australia defend its crown only if they have a paid subscription to Amazon, which offers membership of Prime Video as a bonus, or to the video streaming service.

Amazon immediately announced last night a sports channel as part of its Australian service, beIN SPORTS (that’s not a typo), which will be available for $14.99 a month, but the new cricket events will be available on the existing Prime Video channel for current subscribers.

To give an idea of the cost to Amazon, in January Seven and Foxtel reportedly paid $1.5 billion for the rights to one-day internationals, Big Bash League and Test cricket (Nine has the rights to the Ashes series here and in England). In August Disney paid US$3 billion to secure the Indian rights to ICC tournaments.

Amazon first acquired sports rights for its Prime service in April 2017 when it signed a US$50 million deal for the non-exclusive rights to stream portions of the NFL’s Thursday night football coverage. That deal saw Amazon take over coverage from Fox, which surrendered its rights early because it was losing money. In March 2021, Amazon acquired rights to become the exclusive broadcaster of Thursday night football, starting with the 2023 season and running through to 2033, paying approximately US$1 billion a year to become the first streaming service to exclusively carry a package of NFL games.

And why did the NFL agree to this? Simple. The lure of younger viewers. The average age of viewers watching Thursday night games on Amazon is 47, and the average age of men watching games on free-to-air in the US is 54. Since then Amazon has acquired exclusive sports rights in 10 countries, including Australia. That now looks likely to accelerate.