Amazon lays ground work to tap into US sports betting
Tech titan could be ready to make an assault on US betting market after its exploration into gamified sports streaming
Amazon has begun using Twitch and its Thursday Night NFL live streams to test out DFS-style gamification features that could pave the way for online social sports betting in the US.
The ecommerce giant is streaming 11 Thursday Night Football matches this season after signing a two-year deal with the NFL worth approximately $130m.
And this year Amazon has decided to stream games on Twitch, the live streaming platform popular with esports players and bettors, as well as on Prime Video.
Image courtesy of GeekWire’s Taylor Soper
According to GeekWire’s Taylor Soper, Twitch has recently integrated several “extensions”, or interactive overlay widgets that display the score, live league standings and match statistics.
Using the widgets, fans and viewers are able to make match predictions and stats projections regarding, for example, the number of touchdowns, rushing yards and field goals.
After each quarter, each viewer is rewarded with points and ranked against other players on a live leaderboard in a free-to-play social gaming or DFS-style format.
And speculation is growing that Amazon could be about to enter the US sports betting arena by tailoring the widget plug-ins for sports betting, should more American states go live soon.
Michael Broughton, senior advisor technology and investment strategy at FIFA, took to LinkedIn to voice his thoughts. He wrote: “It’s always been a Beta test.
“There is new functionality coming especially now that more states are regulating betting. New markets opening up all the time and Amazon will no doubt take advantage.”