Amazon is not only streaming NBA games for the first time this season — it’s also aiming to establish a new data-driven way to understand the sport.
The league on Wednesday announced a new multi-year partnership with Amazon Web Services on Wednesday that includes “NBA Inside the Game,” a new basketball intelligence platform fueled by AI.
The platform, built on AWS’ AI infrastructure alongside billions of data points, will enable new statistics such as “Defensive Box Score,” which uses AI to assign responsibility and measure individual defensive impact.
- There is also “Expected Field Goal %,” which calculates the likelihood of a shot going in based on positioning, pressure, and other variables.
- “Gravity” quantifies how much defensive attention a player attracts and the space they create for teammates even without the ball.
The new stats will show up across the NBA app, NBA.com, social channels, and during NBA on Prime broadcasts.
The partnership will also roll out “Play Finder,” a tool that lets broadcasters and fans search thousands of games for similar plays.
Julie Souza, AWS’ global head of sports, said the deal mirrors the company’s role with the NFL’s Next Gen Stats — framing it as both a technology showcase and a long-term innovation partnership.
For AWS, it’s an opportunity to turn basketball into a case study for AI at global scale.
“The reason we do these deals is to let us tell highly technical stories in really accessible ways,” Souza told GeekWire.
The deal establishes AWS as the official “cloud and cloud AI partner” of the NBA, WNBA, G League, Basketball Africa League, and NBA 2K League.
The partnership highlights Amazon’s dual role in sports: distributing games through Prime Video while embedding its technology deeper into leagues’ data and operations. The company already works with Formula 1 on real-time race insights, and with Bundesliga on its match data.
Microsoft has a similar deal with the NFL, which uses the company’s cloud tools and Surface tablets.
Later this month, Amazon Prime Video will kick off new 11-year NBA rights deal, with 67 games streaming globally each season.
“NBA on Prime” is a significant addition to Amazon’s sports streaming catalog, which includes the NFL’s “Thursday Night Football” as well as live action from MLB, NASCAR, and Premier League soccer.
Related: Amazon’s ‘NBA on Prime’ streams will include FanDuel bet tracking, shopping integration, and more
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