Duke Basketball upending Big Ten over Amazon deal has social media buzzing
The Blue Devils are playing chess and not checkers.
Duke Basketball upending Big Ten over Amazon deal has social media buzzing originally appeared on The Sporting News . Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here . When the Duke Blue Devils inked an unprecedented deal with Amazon to stream three games in the 2026-27 men's basketball season on Prime Video, most of the onlookers were excited to see progress in college sports.
However, the decision makers for the Big Ten weren't thrilled at all. Why, though? One of the three games distributed by the entertainment giant is Duke-Michigan at Madison Square Garden in NYC.
What was initially scheduled to be on ESPN moves away from linear television and is a "test product," of sorts. This doesn't sit well with the B1G for a few reasons. Most notably, they don't have a seat at the table for the marquee event and didn't think about the idea first.
In a lengthy social media post, IP lawyer David McKenzie explained the position of both sides that none of this would be possible without the assistance of ESPN, who is the broadcast partner for the ACC. The "Worldwide Leader in Sports" is actually making a calculated move without scaling back, and collecting rights fees for Amazon to test the market of millions of sports consumers. "The structure of the Duke deal seems to be the answer," McKenzie said about ESPN giving up key non-conference games.