OT: Amazon wins rights to stream Thursday Night Football

Submitted by Codeman on

SIAP.  Another development for cord cutters. Amazon has outbid Twitter for streaming Thursday Night Football.  Stories like this will likely become more frequent over the next few years.  Relevant details:

  • Only Amazon Prime members can watch through Amazon
  • Included with Amazon Prime membership
  • Amazon paid $50,000,000 for the rights
  • Also in talks with MLB and NBA, though no definite news there

Link

copacetic

April 5th, 2017 at 10:16 AM ^

I was actually really impressed with how good the quality of the twitter streams were last year. I'm sure Amazon will be able to pick up where they left off. 



Glad the NFL does this, give cord cutters a legal way to stream and they gladly will. 

GRBluefan

April 5th, 2017 at 10:16 AM ^

about Amazon in general.  On the one hand, I am a prime member and enjoy the convenience and overall shopping experience.  On the other hand I am terrified for what the entity as a whole means for the future of brick and mortar retail and American jobs in general.  I increasingly find myself looking for excuses to not use Amazon and go to a traditional retailer instead.

FauxMo

April 5th, 2017 at 10:39 AM ^

I have no idea what the actual numbers are (I am sure they exist, I just don't know where), but I'll bet the ratio of jobs gained vs. lost by Amazon expansion is not particularly good for overall employment, maybe something like 1/10 (a total guess)? It won't be now - because we're Americans, and we wait until the problem is a crisis before we do anything about it - but someday we're going to have to deal with the effects of technology and automation on employment. Can anyone say, Universal Basic Income??? 

The Mad Hatter

April 5th, 2017 at 11:00 AM ^

They're currently in a class action suit for forcing their warehouse employees to work off the clock.

I do buy a lot of things from there, but only when the discount v's a local retail store is substantial, say 20-25%.

My son's TV died the other night so I started looking for a replacement.  Amazingly, the one I decided on was cheapest at Best Buy of all places. I haven't shopped there in years. 

xtramelanin

April 5th, 2017 at 11:13 AM ^

amazon.  in fact, at a meeting last year in detroit the amazon people had with michigan/midwestern wholesalers the amazon people literally had to cut the meeting short and leave.  

to give you an idea of what amazon was doing, they would bid to be the actual shipper for the various wholesalers.  understand that the wholesalers accounts are graded and if they fall below standard, amazon suspends their accounts and holds all their money.   so get this:  amazon was failing to ship, the wholesalers were getting dinged by customer complaints, amazon would freeze their accounts and seize their money  ----   and it was amazon's fault because they were screwing up the shipping!

to make it even better, it will take literally months to break through their electronic fence to talk with someone who can undo the problem.    i avoid doing business with amazon, and that is why. 

xtramelanin

April 5th, 2017 at 11:34 AM ^

and hit the nail right on the head.  amazon could care less, the wholesalers have no other worthwhile platform to use, there's no place left to go!

Image result for i got no place else to go

JamieH

April 5th, 2017 at 7:40 PM ^

If you pick up a Best Buy card and get 5% back on all purchases, they are actually a pretty good place to shop. I've gotten several of my major appliances there (dishwasher, freezer, TV) and also got my wife's new laptop there. Amazon charges tax in our state, so it is less of a great deal

Jack Hammer

April 5th, 2017 at 11:00 AM ^

Representatives in HR (my neighbors) at Amazon attest that every Monday morning Amazon HQ welcomes 200 new skilled workers. Unfortunately there is nowhere for them to live within 30 miles of Seattle due to the real estate price increases related to the overall job growth in the area. CSB: The house next door just sold in cash for 7 figures (double its value in 10 years) to Chinese investors who never saw the property and never plan to live here.

FauxMo

April 5th, 2017 at 11:17 AM ^

A quick skim of the article leads me to believe, like Obi Wan once said, "these are not the numbers we are looking for..."

How about something that tells us, "Amazon plans to add X jobs (5000, 10,000?) to a unit that will work on fully automating the check-out process from every retailer in American, putting 3 million cashiers out of work over the next decade"? 

The Oxford Wolverine

April 5th, 2017 at 11:40 AM ^

As someone tied to urban planning, even if you could acheive a one-to-one ratio between jobs lost in brick and mortar local businesses to Amazon-like, factory-style warehouses, the impact is huge on local communities and society in general.  The loss of community vibrancy through the degredation of human interaction shouldn't be overlooked, much like how twitter and facebook has replaced face to face communication.  Advances in technology, which are meant to make our life easier, will further isolate each one of us in the world, at a time when members of society are having an increasingly harder time relating with one another.

Now whether you believe we as a society have much power to dictate societal evolution through shifts in technology and other sectors is a whole other matter.  It seems that the path of least resistance has always won out in the long run.

4godkingandwol…

April 5th, 2017 at 11:46 AM ^

... I have never worked in the retail arm, but do have to defend the company somewhat. In fact, not even the company, but technological advancement. Technology has been putting people out of jobs for centuries. If it wasn't Bezos, it would be some other person. if you build a better mouse trap, people will use it. What that means at the macro scale is worth contemplating (like UBI), but the problem is much older and widespread than Amazon. To not shop at Amazon in order to reduce the pace of this phenomenon is a Sisyphean undertaking.

Actually has it's own wiki page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_unemployment

 

 

 

 

 

FrankMurphy

April 5th, 2017 at 12:41 PM ^

As a former Amazon employee, I'll say this: working there has its challenges, but Amazon is dead serious about its "Customer Obsession" mantra. The company does well in part because it places the customer at the center of its universe. That may come at the expense of mom & pops and Amazon vendors, contractors, and suppliers who feel the squeeze under its heavy-handed negotiation tactics, but there is no company that is more committed to the customer than Amazon.

FauxMo

April 5th, 2017 at 10:50 AM ^

That's very, very poor math leaving out many, many variables. $50 million to Amazon is like the penny your drop on the dirty sidewalk and leave behind because you can't be bothered. Amazon is most likely to be the world's first* $1 trillion company. 

*Not including Saudi Aramco, which shouldn't count...

superstringer

April 5th, 2017 at 11:58 AM ^

Eh, that's revenue.  That's not profit.  Meaning, that's the cost of goods going through them; of course it's super-high.  But they are making only a small percentage off of that.  Their 2016 net profit was just under $900M.  So the NFL deal is actually quite a bit of a chunk of that.

skurnie

April 5th, 2017 at 12:35 PM ^

Yeah I do understand the difference between profit/revenue.

I think they'll continue spending money towards Prime/Streaming, especially as most states now require Sales Tax to online orders.

Plus with the stranglehold and volume of distribution that they have, two day shipping doesn't cost as much as it used to for them.