In June of last year, Amazon won the rights to show 20 English Premier League games on their Prime platform, and the 3-year deal was reported as being worth £90million.
For those of us already subscribed to the full home shopping and TV deal this was a rare thing, a consumer win. Sure, we were still paying for these games, but we weren’t paying any extra for them. Huzzah.
Last night’s broadcast started extremely well.
Amazon did that which I had predicted and hired virtually every TV football name one might have already been familiar with for the launch.
After all, one of the reasons so many people shop with Amazon online is because if you want an item, they normally offer 100 different versions of it.
Thierry Henry, Alan Shearer, Peter Crouch, Roberto Martinez, Lee Dixon, Harry Redknapp, Jermaine Jenas, Alex Scott, Peter Schmeichel and Michael Owen.
Gabby Logan, Jim Rosenthal, Steve Bower, Dion Dublin, Robbie Savage, Tim Sherwood, Joe Cole and Dermot Gallagher were all on hand in the studio.
The voices of Clive Tyldesley, Jon Champion, Connor McNamara, Guy Mowbray and Ian Darke provided the running commentaries.
There were two problems however that critically undermined the entire deal.
The picture quality on my 4K television which was enjoying rock solid broadband was substandard.
Some fans couldn’t get the Amazon stream to work at all.
Worse yet, the game wasn’t actually live. To clarify, there was a delay. For some it was up to 30 seconds, for others, it was significantly longer. You don’t get much more damning evidence, than another Amazon product proving the case.
I got in touch with Amazon last night, and they attempted to say that their poor quality service was the industry standard.
The fundamental problem Amazon have, is that in the 21st century we are surrounded by devices beeping genuinely live information, plus, many of us are in contact with friend online, exchanging reactions to games – again – in real time.
Watching a game with constant spoilers is something nobody in their right mind would enjoy.
Amazon have potentially business crippling problem here, and one that will not solve itself.