Why Amazon has struggled to crack India
In June 2022, India’s cricket board was preparing to auction the media rights to the Indian Premier League tournament, and expectations in Mumbai were stratospheric. Bankers and broadcasters were bracing for a bruising bidding war, and the board itself was counting on one company above all to push prices higher: Amazon.com.Executives who favored the deal argued that cricket, one of India’s most potent cultural and commercial properties, would cast a halo over the Amazon brand and further the company’s ambition of becoming the biggest e-commerce operation in the world’s most populous nation. Then hours before the auction, Amazon pulled out — ceding the rights to Walt Disney Co. and India’s Reliance Industries.The decision was jarring at the time because Amazon had been scooping up rights for soccer, rugby and tennis around the world. But in retrospect, it heralded a major shift in emphasis. Andy Jassy, just finishing up his first year as chief executive officer, was beginning to lower the curtain on the Jeff Bezos era, when Amazon was prone to making big bets that might not pay off for many years.
