Those who have taken on the role of technical advisor to Jeff Bezos, which denotes a high-potential executive serving for a time as his “shadow,” often go on to do big things.
One of them is Jay Marine, who oversees Amazon’s sports business as the vice president of Prime Video and global head of sports. Marine is little known in the US sports industry but has a much bigger profile at Amazon. A 20-year vet of the company, Marine helped launch the Kindle, Amazon’s first homegrown device, before serving from 2013 to 2015 as Bezos’ advisor, an intense role that involves traveling and going to meetings with Bezos and whose alums include Andy Jassy, now the CEO.
From there, Marine was sent to London in 2015 to launch Prime Video abroad, leading to a move into sports, starting with the US Open tennis and Premier League soccer rights. Now the NFL’s “Thursday Night Football” sits under him, the result of a $11 billion, 11-year deal.
Industry insiders who have dealt with Marine say he’s analytical and down-to-earth, without the big personality that might compete with the many sports execs he might find himself negotiating with. Marine, a New Jersey-based father of three girls, joked on “The Sports Media Podcast” that his “claim to fame” was playing in a high-school basketball playoff game against Chris Webber and a football game against Tyrone Wheatley.
“Neither one of those worked out very well for me, but we did play the games,” he said.
He compared his current remit to the early, scrappy days of Amazon. “I think we’re at our best as a company when we act like a startup,” he said. “I love to do new things and build things.”
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Marine’s next move could be for the NBA, which Amazon craves for its young, global fan base. The league began 45-day talks with the incumbents Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery on March 9. If the NBA creates a third digital-rights package, Amazon is seen by many as a stronger contender than Apple and Netflix, which have made smaller moves in live sports.
Marine’s main job is to prove that sports can be a valuable and efficient asset in keeping people subscribed to Amazon’s $139-a-year Prime membership.
“For us, everything starts with Prime,” Marine told CNBC in a rare interview last fall. “We sit around saying, how can we make Prime better, how can we add more value to Prime? We want Prime to be the best membership program in the world.”
Antenna research has suggested that sports programming can punch above its weight as a retention tool for streamers. And the rise of sports within Amazon has led to tensions over finite resources between sports and entertainment. Some insiders on the entertainment side — which has taken big swings, like “Lord of the Rings,” but has generally been seen as a middling success — saw a clear power shift toward Marine and the sports business in January when Amazon MGM Studios, its entertainment production arm, and Prime Video had their biggest layoffs to date.
Amazon did not comment for this story.
Amazon’s sports moves have been mostly incremental
Marine has said Amazon plans to be a prominent sports broadcaster in every major country over time. But what that means exactly in terms of the rights it bids for, and doesn’t, is unclear.
Apart from its big bet on “Thursday Night Football,” Amazon’s sports moves have been largely incremental. It has some WNBA games, Premier Boxing Champions fights, and NASCAR rights. It’s investing $115 million in Diamond Sports in a deal to rescue the regional sports broadcaster from bankruptcy and give Amazon streaming rights to its games. The deal lets Diamond continue airing local NBA broadcasts, which makes it more likely Amazon will bid for national NBA rights, the analyst Ben Thompson of Stratechery wrote.
But Amazon passed on the Pac-12 last year, per Sports Business Journal. It also didn’t renew its Premier League contract last year.
Marine said on the podcast that Amazon looks at the most popular (and costly) sports that bring the biggest audiences but is also interested in emerging (and less expensive) areas like women’s sports that have growth potential, citing its deals with the WNBA and the National Women’s Soccer League.
The media consultant Patrick Crakes said that it’s still TBD whether sports can move the needle for Prime but that the NBA is attractive because its long season could help Amazon build a sport-viewing habit.
“I think they’re experimenting,” Crakes said. “The experimenting is getting more serious.” Crakes added that “the level of scrutiny is now at its highest level” because Marine is “paying attention to it every day.”
Marine’s team has been in flux, too. Marie Donoghue, an ESPN vet who was brought on in 2018 to run sports-rights negotiations for Amazon and has been credited with helping land “TNF,” found herself layered when Marine moved into his current role, in early 2022, between her and Mike Hopkins, a senior vice president. She left in January for DraftKings.
Amazon’s continued moves in sports aren’t a given
Amazon Prime’s move into advertising also could drive it to add more sports, said John Kosner, a former ESPN executive who’s now a sports media and tech consultant. Advertisers are willing to pay high rates to advertise in live sports, which draws engaged fans who are habituated to seeing ads during breaks.
There’s a common perception that Amazon’s ability to outspend rivals gives it an edge in negotiating with leagues. Under Donoghue, it pulled out all the stops for “TNF,” taking out a Super Bowl ad to promote it and hiring star anchors.
But Amazon isn’t one to overspend just because it can. Sports isn’t existential to Amazon the way it is to a Disney or Warner Bros. Discovery.
If the billions it’s spending on sports don’t pay off for Prime, it could curb its ambitions.
The research firm Kantar said the Premier League drove Prime signups in 2021, and Marine said Amazon’s first “TNF” game attracted a record number of Prime signups. He’s been conspicuously mum on the subject since then.
Money also isn’t everything to the sports leagues. They have other interests besides helping Amazon sell more stuff, like having partners with social channels and content arms that can help grow the leagues’ audiences.
Still, “TNF” has boosted its credibility with leagues and advertisers. Average viewership increased by 24% in year two over year one, to about 12 million per game, and the viewers have been younger than those of the TV broadcasts.
“I think things have been shifting,” Marine said on the podcast. “More than ever, leagues are excited to work with us.”
