Amazon Prime wins UK contract for ATP World Tour

Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) managed to snatch Sky’s (LON:SKY) UK contract for the ATP World Tennis Tour from 2019.

The US giant made a deal thought to be £10 million a year for the contract that previously belonged to Sky for an estimated £8 million a year.

Amazon’s new contract will cover the ATP World Tour Masters 1000 and Masters 500 events around the world. This includes the tournaments in Monte Carlo, Paris, Miami, Madrid, Indian Wells and Shanghai.

Whilst Sky may have lost this round of bidding for major sports events, they will enter a new bidding war next year with BT – both of whom want the rights for Premier League next year.

Sky are slowly backing off sports after bills for the contracts are rapidly increasing. The one-off £629 million rise in its Premier League rights deals contributed to a 14 percent fall in Sky profits at its UK and Ireland operations.

Chief executive Jeremy Darroch said: “In a year in which we are absorbing significantly higher programming costs, as a result of the step up in Premier League costs, our financial performance has been good.”

“We are financially very happy. Looking forward, we enter the final quarter of our fiscal year in good shape. Despite the broader consumer environment remaining uncertain, we continue to deliver on our strategy.” he added.

The operating profits were £65 million lower on the year before, despite the costs of the Premier League rights rising by £314 million in the period.

Darroch said last week that they had “walked away” from bidding for some sporting events.

For Amazon, this is the second major TV sports rights deal they have gained this year following their agreement with the National Football League in April to stream American football games in the US this season, alongside broadcasters NBC and CBS.