Subscription service /Viewers will need Amazon deal for ATP tennis from 2019
Amazon has won the UK rights to broadcast the ATP World Tour when the current deal with Sky Sports ends next year.
According to reports, the American computing giant will take over at the end of Sky’s five-year contract after bidding a reported £10million a year for the rights to provide coverage of men’s elite tennis.
From 2019, viewers will require a subscription to Amazon Prime to enable them to watch the likes of Andy Murray and Roger Federer on a regular basis.
The contract covers the ATP Masters 1000 and 500 events – which include tournaments in Indian Wells, Miami, Monte Carlo, Paris, Shanghai and Madrid – but does not cover the four grand slams and the end-of-year ATP World Tour finals in London. The move, which it is thought has not yet been signed but will be completed in the next few weeks, is believed to be Amazon’s first major live TV rights deal outside the United States.
Meanwhile, reigning US Open champion Stan Wawrinka is battling to be fit for this year’s tournament and has announced his withdrawal from the forthcoming events in Montreal and Cincinnati.
Wawrinka struggled
0 Armchair viewers hoping for a close-up of Andy Murray in action on the ATP Tour will have to tune in to Amazon Prime from 2019. with a knee problem during the grass-court season and lost in the first round of Wimbledon to Russia’s Daniil Medvedev.
The world No 4 said he would not return to the court until he was fully fit, and he will miss the next two Masters events on the ATP Tour calendar.
The top players are due to return to action for the first time since Wimbledon at the Rogers Cup in Canada next week, followed by the Western & Southern Open.
In a statement released through his management company, Wawrinka said: “After much backwards and forwards and consultations with my doctors and my team, unfortunately I have decided to skip Canada and Cincinnati to be on the safe side. Hugely disappointing for my fans and myself that I have to make this decision, but I need to be 100 per cent confident before I resume competition till the injury that plagued me in Wimbledon has been resolved.”
Wawrinka’s absence from the two tournaments means that, if he is fit to defend his title in New York, he will almost certainly go into the year’s final grand slam having not played a match for nearly two months.
Novak Djokovic is also missing having called an early end to his season to rest his troublesome elbow while world No 1 Andy Murray has been named as the top seed in Montreal but is still deciding whether to play after the hip problems that hampered him at Wimbledon.