Amazon is getting into college basketball, and its first partner is the biggest team brand in the sport.
Prime Video announced a multiyear partnership with Duke, including a three-game deal for the upcoming 2026-27 college basketball season:
• Wednesday, Nov. 25: Duke vs. UConn in Las Vegas. A rematch of the most memorable game of the 2025-26 season, UConn’s comeback win in the Elite Eight, the day before Thanksgiving.
• Monday, Dec. 21: Duke vs. Michigan at Madison Square Garden. Michigan is the defending national champion, and both teams will start the season ranked in the top 5.
• Saturday, Feb. 20: Duke vs. Gonzaga in Detroit. This will be the third straight year that Duke plays in a high-profile nonconference game in February.
This will mark Amazon Prime Video’s initial entry into college sports, taking advantage of loopholes in established TV contracts that allow nonconference matchups at neutral sites outside of the participating conference’s footprints to air on networks other than those with conference deals.
Prime Video has been aggressively pursuing high-profile rights deals in pro sports, including the NFL, NBA, the Masters, NASCAR, WNBA and NWSL.
As for Duke’s side, the Blue Devils were already one of the highest revenue drivers in college basketball (No. 1 among teams in the 2026 Sweet 16), with a robust NIL budget and early-adopter front-office system led by GM Rachel Baker that has the program near the top of the recruiting and transfer rankings this spring.
For a college basketball TV landscape dominated by ESPN, Fox Sports and CBS, the deal opens new pathways for nontraditional networks and streaming services to carve out premium inventory with teams eager to drive new revenue streams to cover increasing NIL costs.
While Duke’s men’s basketball competitors in the ACC take notice, this should feel familiar to Notre Dame, which has used its independent status in college football to land a longstanding and lucrative standalone partnership with NBC to air its home games.
What it means for Amazon
It is not hard to understand Prime Video’s strategy and how it will continue being a big part of sports fans’ lives. While the Duke deal is just three games, it is a start to what could be an expansion into more major college hoops over the next decade. The keyword is “major.”
Prime Video is mostly looking for programming at the top. It already has the NFL, the NBA, the Masters, the Yankees in New York, the NHL in Canada and major soccer properties in Europe. Duke falls into that category in college hoops. It probably didn’t hurt that Charlie Neiman, the head of sports partnerships for Prime Video, was a water polo player at Duke.
Amazon’s goal is to make its subscription membership a must-have for anyone with its “free shipping” and its top-flight sports. This deal adds to it. — Andrew Marchand
What it means for Duke
In an era where blue blood status has never meant less, Duke under Jon Scheyer continues to be the exception — and this Amazon deal is just the latest example.
The Blue Devils already are one of the best-financed programs in college basketball, but Scheyer and his staff continue to take steps to ensure they stay there. For starters, Duke — like many teams in this era — has moved away from participating in multi-team events (MTEs) in the nonconference, instead preferring to play marquee, standalone games. That’s both for competitive reasons and financial reasons. On the competitive front, Duke has dominated the ACC so thoroughly the last two seasons — sweeping the league’s regular-season and tournament titles — that Scheyer and his staff need to ensure they still have quality, needle-moving games on the schedule. That’s a large reason Duke played Michigan in February of this season, and Illinois in February of 2024-25. (Scheyer has also shown a preference for late-season nonconference games to prepare for the tempo and scouting schedule in the NCAA Tournament.)
Financially, though, these sorts of nonconference games are also imperative in the NIL and revenue-sharing era, where every dollar matters. As The Athletic reported in November, heading into Players Era Festival, the best college basketball teams typically try to chase at least a typical home gate — roughly $500,000 to $1 million — when playing in these neutral-site contests. Duke’s brand certainly helps to that effect, but it’s difficult to believe Amazon isn’t paying top dollar to broadcast one of the top brands in the sport.
Getting UConn, Michigan and Gonzaga — three of college basketball’s elites, including half of this season’s Final Four — involved only makes it more likely that this is a lucrative affair for Duke. — Brendan Marks
