Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) has passed another significant milestone along its path into sports streaming with the award of NASCAR motor racing rights for the first time.
Amazon Prime will stream exclusively five NASCAR Cup Series races as part of a seven-year deal worth a reported US$7.7bn.
Prime will also show exclusive coverage of practice and qualifying in the first half of the NASCAR Cup Series season (excluding The Clash, Daytona 500 and All-Star races) and produce a Garage 56 documentary.
Warner Brothers TNT platform is also getting live broadcast rights for the first time and will show five live races exclusively.
NASCAR's existing broadcasters. Fox and NBC Sports, will continue to show the majority of the 38-race series, with Fox showing the first 14 events and NBC the final 14 races.
“Our goal was to secure long-term stability with an optimized mix of distribution platforms and innovative partners that would allow us to grow the sport while delivering our product to fans wherever they are,” said NASCAR president Steve Phelps.
Jay Marine, vice president and global head of sports at Prime Video, added: “NASCAR is the most popular motorsport in the country, and we can’t wait to deliver Cup Series racing to Prime members in the US for the first time.”