• by Tanya Gazdik , October 30, 2024

Amazon will have a Black Friday National Basketball Association matchup when the company’s new global NBA agreement goes into effect in 2025. 

“After debuting its Black Friday NFL coverage last November, Amazon is leaning into the ritual,” according to Deadline. “The tech giant’s Prime Video division secured a long-term rights deal with the NBA, bolstering its live sports offerings and adding more enticements for ad buyers.”

Amazon announced its NBA plans during an event hosted by Adweek. 

“It also said ad inventory for this year’s Black Friday NFL game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Las Vegas Raiders is sold out,” per Deadline. “About 40% of the advertisers are new to the game, the company noted.”

The NFL and NBA compete for Christmas Day ratings.

“On the day that officially starts the Christmas shopping season (which now unofficially starts weeks earlier), the NFL and NBA will be united through a common broadcast partner,” according to NBC Sports.

This is upbeat news out of Amazon on an otherwise fraught week. 

Amazon and its CEO Jeff Bezos have come under fire this week for a decision by The Washington Post not to endorse a presidential candidate. Bezos owns the newspaper and so far about 250,000 subscribers have cancelled in protest. 

But some publications, including The Atlantic, suggest sticking it to Bezos without harming the journalists who work for the paper. 

“Canceling Amazon Prime, and communicating your reasons for doing so, is a step you can take that directly rebukes Jeff Bezos,”  according to Slate.  “There are plenty of good reasons not to patronize Amazon. And although Bezos no longer wholly owns the company, it remains the source of his fortune and therefore his power. … Two hundred thousand people canceling Prime wouldn’t be catastrophic for a company that made over $40 billion on subscriptions last year. But given that Prime is the engine that runs the whole retail arm of the company, no dent in its subscriber base will go unnoticed.”