Retail giant Amazon has agreed a sub-licensing deal with media and entertainment company Viaplay to show English men's soccer’s Premier League in Denmark and Sweden from the 2024-25 season.
Under a four-year agreement, Amazon’s Prime Video streaming service will exclusively show the early Saturday match (1:30pm CET) every week in those territories.
The platform will air a total of 38 games per season (one per matchday) through the 2027-28 campaign.
The English top-flight features several Danish and Swedish international players including Rasmus Hojlund and Christian Eriksen (Manchester United), Alexander Isak (Newcastle United), and Dejan Kulusevski (Tottenham Hotspur).
Viaplay holds rights to the Premier League in the Scandinavian markets but previously announced that it will give up some of its sports rights due to its financial troubles.
As a result, fans in Denmark and Sweden will now need to subscribe to two streaming services to watch all matches from the Premier League.
Despite acquiring live Premier League content, Amazon has announced it will not raise the price of Prime Video subscriptions in the Nordics.
Martin Backlund, director of Amazon Prime Video in the Nordics, said the company has been eyeing the region for a long time to invest in soccer rights.
He told Danish outlet Media Watch: "We know that there is great interest in the Premier League (in Denmark), so this will provide high value to the Danish customers.”
Viaplay’s six-year Premier League rights deal runs until 2027-28 and also covers Norway and Finland.
The company is currently in a period of major upheaval as it divests from many of its international markets in favor of focusing closely on Scandinavia.
Aimed at “steadying the ship”, Viaplay sold its UK operation and withdrew from the Baltics, Poland, and North America across the last year.
The firm recently announced that TV3 Group, the prominent media company in the Baltic states, will cover its content in that region through a distribution deal, while it sold its UK business, and its accompanying suite of rights, back to UK-based network Premier Sports last November.
Last month, however, the beleaguered European sports media heavyweight announced it is showing signs of recovery after a turbulent year on the back of aggressive cutbacks and company-wide restructuring.
The company posted 3% organic sales growth for the fourth quarter of 2023 from SEK4.7 billion ($454 million) in 2022 to SEK4.9 billion, helping overall net sales in 2023 increase to AEK19.6 billion from SEK15.7 billion in 2022.
