Amazon announced Wednesday that it has acquired exclusive streaming rights to Overtime Elite, a social media-focused youth basketball league, as Amazon expands its sports footprint and the startup league recruits a notable investor.
The company also said it participated in the Series D investment of Overtime Elite’s parent company Overtime in August, joining Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, rapper Drake, NBA stars such as Kevin Durant and personal justice corporation Blackstone.
It’s another live sports investment from Amazon, which also streams NFL, WNBA, MLB and British Premier League games exclusively on Prime.
Amazon will stream 20 according to the season over the next 3 years, the first of which will take position on Friday.
Prime will also film players for a truth series debuting next year on Netflix’s Drive to Survive after HBO’s Formula 1 racers and HBO’s Hard Knocks after NFL teams.
$500 million. That’s Overtime’s assessment following its new $100 million investment led through Liberty Media, Formula 1’s parent company.
Overtime Elite is Amazon’s latest high-profile move to enter live sports, adding spending more than a billion dollars a year to exclusively stream the NFL’s Thursday night football shows. Founded in 2016, Overtime attracted a huge social media following before launching its logo league last year. Overtime Elite will pay its 16- to 19-year-old players a $100,000 minimum wage, attracting as many sensible recruits out of school as possible with the promise of monetary security and exposure. Up, since trade agreements for school athletes were legalized last summer. 19-year-old wins Amen and Ausar Thompson are the most notable stars of Overtime Elite, and they are all expected to make it to the first round of the 2023 NBA Draft.
Overtime Elite secures media deal with Amazon Prime Video (New York Times)
Overtime raises $100 million with Drake, Jeff Bezos and Kevin Durant on its roof (Forbes)