David Farnor | On 05, Nov 2017

The debut of live tennis on Amazon Prime Video begins this week with the inaugural Next Gen ATP Finals. The tournament, which runs from 7th to 11th November in Milan, Italy, features the future stars of men’s tennis.

Amazon Prime Video will stream live coverage of the tournament’s entire 16-match schedule to tennis fans in more than 200 countries and territories, including the UK. Live coverage on Prime Video begins 7th November at 1pm GMT with the first match of the round robin stage. There will be two sessions, with two matches each, throughout the three days of round robin play. The semifinals will take place 10th November, beginning at 5pm, with the match for third place and Finals scheduled for 11th November at 5pm and 7pm respectively.

In addition to the live Next Gen ATP Finals matches, fans will be able to watch replays of completed matches and other tournament content, such as daily highlights, player profiles, and the official trailer by visiting a dedicated Next Gen ATP Finals page:
www.primevideo.com/ATP.

The tournament is also available to stream on the Amazon Prime Video app for TVs, game consoles, set top boxes and connected devices, which includes Amazon Fire TV and mobile devices. Search for “Next Gen ATP Finals” to see the event’s detail page and click the “watch live” green button to start streaming.

The new five-day ATP World Tour event, which has $1.275 million in prize money, will feature eight of the world’s best 21-and-under men’s players: Andrey Rublev, Karen Khachanov, Denis Shapovalov, Borna Coric, Jared Donaldson, Hyeon Chung, Daniil Medvedev. The tournament will also introduce a series of innovative new rules, such as a shot clock and shorter format.

 

Amazon takes ATP tennis rights from Sky

3rd August 2017

Amazon has taken a major leap into the sports arena with a new deal to poach the rights to ATP tennis from Sky.

Sky has long held the rights to the majority of mainstream sports, including the ATP World Tour – the globe-trotting series of mens’ events that decides each player’s world rankings. Now, though, Amazon has outbid the pay-TV broadcaster.

The deal marks an ace serve from the streaming service, as it seeks to differentiate itself from rival Netflix. Earlier this year, Amazon launched Amazon Channels, a way to build a customised bundle of standalone subscription streaming platforms for Amazon Prime members – including a discounted subscription to Eurosport. Now, Amazon Prime Video will have sport in its own right, streaming almost all major men’s tennis matches, except for the four grand slams (Wimbledon, the US, Australian and French Open). The deal includes the Masters 1000 and Masters 500 events, such as Monte Carlo, Madrid, Miami and Shanghai, not to mention the end-of-year ATP World Tour finals at The O2 in London. It is reported by The Guardian to be around the £10 million mark, an overhead lob to the £8 million bid from by Sky.

While the move may come as some surprise to UK viewers, it continues Amazon’s sports acquisitions in the US, where it inked an agreement to stream 10 Thursday-night NFL games this season. It also owns the rights to Bundesliga audio commentaries in Germany, as part of its Amazon Music service. Sky, meanwhile, is having to stump up more cash on football, as its competition with BT TV for Premier League rights continues to heat up. Indeed, as part of its recent rebrand of Sky Sports, which moved from numbered channels to themed channels dedicated to particular sports, tennis has been bumped down to one of its channels dedicated to mixed sports.

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