Reporting from Silicon Angle via The Information says that Amazon is developing an app to focus on its sports offerings. The sports offerings are currently built into the overall Amazon Prime app and include access to its exclusive Thursday Night NFL football, free sports-based streaming channels from Amazon Freevee and subscription services from the NBA, MLB, WNBA, and other sports organizations. There is probably more than enough content to justify a totally sports-centered app, along the lines of the ESPN app. But oddly enough the same story that highlighted to work to design a sports-based app also says that Amazon may not even put it on the market.
We don’t know whether that is because Amazon is worried that it will confuse people or because it wants to keep everyone in basically the same online store. If you go straight to sports you may not be tempted to purchase anything else whether it be content-based or just Amazon store based. The danger that consumers would turn around and say “Oh so now I have to get a subscription to Amazon’s sports on top of my Prime just to watch Thursday Night Football FORGET IT” is not to be ignored. Many people seem to believe for instance that they must get YouTube TV in order to access the NFL Sunday Ticket package when it launches with YouTube during the 2023 season.
If Amazon can get on top of the messaging a sports app could be a really great idea. Both on the TV app world and mobile it would be nice to be able to focus on sports offerings and even allow companies to advertise their services to the core customers without them being distracted by other things. It would be easier for Amazon to market Thursday Night Football as well. Watch it on the “Amazon Sports App”. But it also has the chance to be one to many choices and create the kind of problem that once existed when there was an HBO Now and and HBO Go on top of the linear cable channels.
Amazon is a pretty smart company. They will probably have it all figured out and market researched before it rolls out. Either way we will pay attention and let you know how it unfolds.
