Amazon is expanding its sports media footprint with a new deal to stream New York Yankees baseball games this season. The Seattle tech giant will stream 21 Yankees games on Prime Video later this year. The live MLB content will be free for Prime members, but only available to those in the Yankees “home-team footprint”: New York state, Connecticut, northeast Pennsylvania, and north and central New Jersey. Related: NFL fans can access live Next Gen Stats for first time via Amazon’s Thursday Night Football stream The games will be simulcasts produced by YES Network. Last year, the Yankees, Sinclair Broadcast Group,… Read More
Here’s what we’re talking about this week on the GeekWire Podcast. Amazon’s second headquarters may be closer to Seattle than you think. Amazon says it plans to grow its presence in Bellevue, in the Seattle suburbs, to 15,000 employees in the next few years. That could be comparable to the number of employees working in the official HQ2 site of Arlington, Va. Will the company find a friendlier climate in the ’burbs? Yes, Virginia, there is an Amazon HQ2, but it’s actually 10 miles outside of Seattle Amazon to bring 15,000 employees to Bellevue as rapid expansion in Seattle-area city… Read More
The National Football League is turning to Amazon’s cloud technologies as it looks to improve the safety of its players. The NFL and Amazon Web Services today announced a new partnership to learn more about what contributes to player injuries — including game rules, equipment, rehab, and recovery strategies — and how to prevent them. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and AWS chief Andy Jassy made the announcement at Amazon’s AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas on Thursday. “There are very few relationships we get involved with where the partner and the NFL can change the game,” Goodell said on stage.… Read More
We know Jeff Bezos has whipped together pancakes for Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson. Could the billionaire Amazon founder also be working on a recipe that will make him an NFL team owner? A new report from CBS Sports is revisiting the idea that the world’s richest person might also want to own a professional sports franchise. The web site says Bezos has become close with several current NFL team owners and has strong support within the league to “join their ranks.” Bezos’ name has surfaced previously in this arena, especially following the death of Seattle Seahawks owner Paul Allen… Read More
There was a limited amount of time to interview Hannah Storm and Andrea Kramer last week, so I made sure to ask the veteran sports journalists about becoming the first all-female duo to call an entire NFL game; what it’s like doing play-by-play and color commentary for Amazon’s Thursday Night Football streams; and how having a viewership across 200 countries and territories changes the way they describe the live action. But as our chat came to a close, Kramer wasn’t ready to end it. “Hold on, wait a minute — Taylor, it’s GeekWire!” said Kramer. “You have to let us… Read More
