You Can Now Watch UFC Pay-Per-View Events on Amazon Even if You Don’t Have Prime
This is a great deal.
If you’d like to watch UFC 222 on Saturday but don’t want to mess with pay-per-view, you have a surprising alternative: Amazon.
Recode reports that in an effort to compete with cable providers like Comcast and Spectrum, Amazon hooked up with UFC to broadcast—for the foreseeable future—its weekend matches.
This gives the viewer another route to ringside with the MMA giant, and a discount. Buying rights to view UFC fights on Amazon will cost just $64.99, and you can watch anywhere you’re able to access videos available through Prime. This allows for skipping some of the irritations of purchasing matches through a cable provider, as well as reducing cost.
Recode outlined why the UFC-Amazon deal is significant:
It’s the first time Amazon has sold a pay-per-view package for live sports, and it’s a reminder that Amazon sees live sports as an important video opportunity moving forward. Remember, the company paid $50 million last year to stream “Thursday Night Football” games and is in the bidding to get a multi-year contract with the NFL to stream “Thursday Night Football” again. Live sports matter to Amazon.
Amazon’s move to PPV should be another warning to cable companies that Amazon is becoming its own kind of cable company. It already does a lot of what cable companies do, like provide a slate of movies and TV shows, some of them original, for a monthly fee. In that vein, PPV is a natural progression for where Amazon seems to be headed.
While Amazon is mum about the terms, the online retailer probably gets the same money as other services, Recode reports.
Put the cable remote away on Saturday and get your UFC fix via the same site where you buy books and pants. The future is awesome.
h/t Recode
Read This Next
