For the first time, Amazon Prime is showing a Champions League game. The new broadcaster does everything to ensure that it does not attract attention as a new broadcaster. A night review.
If this broadcast had to be sorted into the streaming categories customary at Amazon, it would certainly not have run under action. Drama would not be affected either. No, what the inclined soccer viewers got on Tuesday evening was probably best described as a romantic comedy. There was a lot of laughter and often, even more teasing, constant use and in the end everyone loved each other. Even FC Barcelona was so fond of FC Bayern in their alpine jerseys that they let them score three goals without any resistance.
And so afterwards you sat on the couch for a long time, stared at the screen, which had long since gone black, and might think about how you had known this friendly type of reporting. Oh yes, exactly, from Sky, therefore! Now the Champions League is no longer running on Sky this season, for the first time in more than two decades, but on DAZN – and, as we saw yesterday, also on Amazon Prime.
The mail order giant is allowed to show the top game on Tuesday, and such a gigantic duel in Camp Nou right at the beginning, that was something. Only what? For the new broadcaster the opportunity not to attract attention as a new broadcaster. If you hadn’t occasionally stared at the logo in the upper right corner of the picture, at the grinning Amazon arrow, the change would not have been noticed. What was primarily due to Sebastian Hellmann, who Prime cunningly borrowed from Sky, so that he is now streamed away moderating the premier class. And what was at Sky Lothar Matthäus is now Matthias Sammer. Hellmann did not let himself be irritated by this and anyway only dropped the name Amazon once, almost as if he didn’t care under which transmitter roof he whistled his sentences into the night.
Another new station
The German soccer community shouldn’t care that much, not only since the European Championship has there been talk of a general over-saturation – and now new channels again? If you are really serious about it in 2021, you need two internet subscriptions for the games during the week, plus Sky for the national leagues and RTL for the national team and their World Cup qualifications. The women in turn run on Magenta TV. Can you get upset about it? Of course, you can.
The older ones will still remember that in the past you even had to zap to tm3 to watch the Champions League, and this niche channel was definitely not stored on the remote control.
But back to yesterday evening, which was a historic one, even if no one carried it in front of them and wanted to emphasize. The novelty that comes with Prime is therefore mainly expressed in the details. In the fact that you received a warning before you could even switch to the stream: “Live broadcasts could contain adult content.” If you clicked, you followed immediately: Oliver Kahn. Absolutely consistent in terms of content.
The titan, who is now a functionary and has also presidentialized his appearance, was asked about a number of things by Hellmann – Salihamidžić, Goretzka and 1999, the mother of all defeats. Hellmann didn’t seem too interested in the answers. So he saved that too from Sky to Prime, that sleek insurance broker among the sports presenters.
Then later, Kahn had left, the experts, who are now called: Sammer, Kim Kulig and Mario Gomez, took over. In the past there was often criticism of the unfair working conditions at Amazon, but these three seemed to be excluded. Or was Kulig’s frozen expression a mute cry for help? For Sammer, meanwhile, you have to invent your own verb that takes into account his expertise and even more the way of expressing it. Maybe collect? This is full-body art, regardless of yourself. At halftime, the shaved head even performed after the unsuccessful defensive action by Barca’s defender Eric Garcia, which had preceded the 0-1.
Just don’t attract attention
Then Mario Gomez grinned from the slim-fit suit that had apparently been sewn on his body shortly before the start of the show. Alexa, wasn’t that Gomez really wearing any socks in his slippers? Such subtleties can be seen in the stream because Amazon presents the Champions League in Ultra HD. What, looking at the overall picture, is extraordinary. But it also means that you can count the beads of sweat on the player’s forehead in close-up.
Because a stable bandwidth is necessary for such high resolution, a couple of social networks were full of the photos that disgruntled soccer fans had taken of their frozen stream. But Amazon can hardly do anything for the Internet, so Andy Scheuer would have to be addressed. Also a Bavarian, after all.
So this evening rippled on in all its sky-likeness, interrupted only by a black screen around the 60th minute and the occasional exegesis of Benedikt Höwedes, who was obliged as co-commentator. Jonas Friedrich assisted. Which is also borrowed from Sky again. “Brutal drew attention to itself”, Höwedes once shouted, and even though you have unfortunately got used to this motivational seminar language, you were briefly startled: Who, please? Amazon Prime rather not. It was too much Sky for that.
And somewhere that Tuesday evening Wolff-Christoph Fuss will have cried silent tears of despair because he is the only one not to participate in Amazon.
