Amazon is stepping into faculty basketball, and its first associate is the most important crew model within the sport.
Prime Video introduced a multi-year partnership with Duke, together with a three-game deal for the upcoming 2026-27 faculty basketball season:
• Wednesday, Nov. 25: Duke vs. UConn in Las Vegas. A rematch of essentially the most memorable sport of the 2025-26 season, UConn’s comeback win within the Elite Eight, the day earlier than Thanksgiving.
• Monday, Dec. 21: Duke vs. Michigan at Madison Sq. Backyard. Michigan is the defending nationwide champions, and each groups will begin the season ranked within the High 5.
• Saturday, Feb. 20: Duke vs. Gonzaga in Detroit. This would be the third straight 12 months that Duke performs in a high-profile non-conference sport in February.
This shall be Amazon Prime Video’s preliminary entry into faculty sports activities, benefiting from loopholes within the established TV contracts that permit non-conference matchups at impartial websites outdoors of the taking part convention’s footprints to air on networks aside from these with convention offers.
Prime Video has been aggressively pursuing high-profile rights offers in professional sports activities, together with the NFL’s “Thursday Evening Soccer,” a number of prime-time video games per week with the NBA, the Masters, NASCAR, WNBA and NWSL.
On Duke’s aspect, the Blue Devils have been already one of many highest income drivers in faculty basketball (No. 1 amongst groups within the 2026 Candy 16), together with a strong NIL price range and early-adopter entrance workplace system led by GM Rachel Baker that has this system close to the highest of the recruiting and switch rankings this spring.
For a university basketball TV panorama dominated by ESPN, Fox Sports activities and CBS, the deal opens new pathways for nontraditional networks and streaming providers to carve out premium stock with groups desperate to drive new income streams to cowl rising NIL prices.
Whereas Duke’s males’s basketball opponents within the ACC take discover, this could really feel acquainted to Notre Dame, which has used its unbiased standing in faculty soccer to have a longstanding and profitable standalone partnership with NBC to air its residence video games.
Evaluation:
It isn’t arduous to grasp Prime Video’s technique and the way it will proceed being an enormous a part of sports activities followers’ lives. Whereas the Duke deal is simply three video games, it’s a begin to what may very well be an enlargement into extra main faculty hoops over the subsequent decade. The key phrase is “main.”
Prime Video is usually in search of programming on the high. It already has the NFL, the NBA, the Masters, the Yankees in New York, the NHL in Canada and main soccer properties in Europe. Duke falls into that class in faculty hoops. It most likely didn’t harm that Charlie Neiman, the top of sports activities partnerships for Prime Video, was a water polo participant at Duke.
Amazon’s aim is to make its subscription membership vital for anybody with its “free delivery” and its top-flight sports activities. This deal provides to it. — Andrew Marchand