BT facilitates Amazon Prime delivery via satellite

Amazon is taking over BT Sport's Box Office channel on Sky until early 2020 in order to provide restricted access to its Premier League coverage.

The move means that most Sky customers will not see BT Sport Box Office on channel 490 from next week through to early January.

Instead, the channel will only be available to commercial users as BT prepares to carry Amazon Prime Video's live Premier League games to commercial premises such as pubs and social clubs.

Prime Video has exclusive live coverage of 20 Premier League matches between 3rd and 5th December and again on 26th and 27th December.

To enable commercial premises to access Amazon's coverage using existing satellite equipment used for Sky and/or BT Sports, the matches are being relayed via satellite.

But ordinary domestic users won't have this access: they will need to stream via the Prime Video app on connected TVs and boxes or via the website.

However the restricted access satellite service means pubs don't have to worry about dodgy broadband or insufficient bandwidth nor fear buffering in front of their customers.

Where multiple matches are being shown at the same time, a red button service will be available to switch feeds. All games will be in HD.

Given Amazon's coverage of the US Open tennis tournament famously crashed several times this year, a reliable satellite back-up will be welcomed by the trade.

Commercial access to the extra Premier League games offered by Amazon is being provided by BT Sport Business, although pub and club owners don't need to be a BT Sport customer to subscribe to the Amazon matches.

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