Amazon Prime Video bags broadcast rights for New Zealand Cricket in India

Amazon Prime Video has forayed into the live sports category in India by bagging the rights of New Zealand Cricket till the end of the 2025-26 season. Team India is scheduled to be touring New Zealand in early 2022. The deal starts from the 2021-22 season.

 

This makes Amazon Prime Video the first streaming service to secure exclusive live cricket rights from a major cricketing board. The rights for the 2020-2021 season starting later this month is intended to be syndicated by Amazon.

 

David White, chief executive, New Zealand Cricket, said, “This partnership with Amazon Prime Video is massive for NZC - we’re delighted and proud to be teaming up with such a famous and successful brand. As we’ve said before, the future of live sport is streaming and in Amazon Prime Video we have a partner right at the centre of the industry; innovative, trend-setter and well-known for putting fans and subscribers first. One of NZC’s key goals is to extend our teams’ global reach and to build closer relationships around the world and, in terms of that particular objective, we don’t think we could be in better hands. India has always been important for viewership of NZC; no other country follows cricket like India, so it’s exciting to be announcing this agreement with India’s leading streamer."  

 

Gaurav Gandhi, director and country manager, Amazon Prime Video, said, “Over the last few years Amazon Prime Video has become the go-to destination for world-class entertainment in India – be it our Amazon Original Series or the biggest blockbuster movies across languages. We are excited to add India’s most loved game — cricket — to our content selection for our Prime Video customers, and we are thrilled to work with New Zealand Cricket on this endeavour as they have a strong, passionate and much-loved cricket team, and the cricketing rivalry between the two countries has been fantastic. We are happy to make this collaboration with New Zealand Cricket our first live sport offering in India, and are confident that our Prime members will be delighted with this initiative”