Amazon <3 Lionel Messi

[Bloomberg]( Today’s top tech news: - U.S. regulators refiled their [antitrust case against Facebook]( - Tencent warned investors of [more regulatory hurdles]( to come - Microsoft will [raise prices for Office 365](, the first major hike in a decade The everything store gets a GOAT Amazon.com Inc. surprised the sporting world last month when it took over French soccer broadcasting. That deal got a lot more interesting when one of the sport’s best players ever, Lionel Messi, made a [surprise move]( to the French league. Messi should make his playing debut for Paris Saint-Germain in the coming weeks. If you’re in the country, the only way to watch legally on TV is through an Amazon Prime membership and an add-on sports package. Until recently, Amazon preferred to dabble on the sidelines of global sport. It picked up small batches of English Premier League and American football games as a light enticement to sports fans. The agreement to [air most of France’s Ligue 1]( is a much bigger deal. It made Amazon the main host of a country’s most popular sport. And it was a risky move after the collapse of the previous broadcasting contract held by Spain’s Mediapro and given Amazon’s relative lack of experience in live sports. Messi could change the equation. When Messi’s old FC Barcelona teammate, Neymar Jr., joined PSG in 2017, he instantly raised the league’s profile and, arguably, its value globally. The coronavirus pandemic, which forced Ligue 1 to end the season prematurely last year, served as a reset of sorts. Reduced ticket sales and a broadcast rebate hit the league and its clubs hard. Amazon’s European sports boss, Alex Green, secured the rights to Ligue 1 at a steep discount in June. Amazon’s presence in France is already contentious. During the country’s first pandemic lockdown, a court there criticized Amazon’s safety protocols in warehouses and barred the company from [selling anything except essential goods](. The video service in France, with 4.5 million viewers, is less than half the size of the U.K. version, according to estimates from Ampere Analysis. Amazon recognizes the significance of Messi’s transfer. “We will be happy to accompany the rest of his career,” an Amazon France account wrote on Twitter. The French deal isn’t a sure thing for Amazon, though, even with Messi. Soccer isn’t quite as pervasive in France as it is in Italy or the U.K. And Ligue 1 isn’t nearly as lucrative as other top leagues in Europe. (PSG exists on another plane because it’s financed by Qatar.) Amazon is asking French customers to pay 13 euros a month on top of a 6 euro fee for Prime. That represents a break from the company’s approach elsewhere of bundling sports into the streaming video service at no additional cost. But it’s still less than the price of Mediapro’s soccer channel, which previously had the rights to most Ligue 1 games and accumulated 600,000 subscriptions before it walked away. After paying 275 million euros for French soccer, Amazon needs about 1.2 million subscribers to break even, according to Ampere. As with all things Amazon, the company will hope soccer fans convert into online shopping loyalists. “Amazon proved agile in buying the rights on the cheap,” said Francois Godard, an analyst at Enders Analysis, “but it still has to demonstrate it can leverage them to significantly increase its e-commerce business footprint.” If it’s successful, France could serve as a model for Amazon in other countries. —[David Hellier](mailto:dhellier@bloomberg.net) in London, with Thomas Seal If you read one thing OnlyFans, a lynchpin of the online porn economy, said it’ll [ban sexually explicit content]( starting in October. The change is necessitated by mounting pressure from banking and payment partners, the company said. Sponsored Content Ever-ready for every opportunity Our Future of Cloud research outlines how to unleash competitiveness on the cloud continuum. [Read our new report now.]( Accenture What else you need to know Automakers will cut production by as many as 7.1 million vehicles this year [due to the global chip crisis](. Chipmakers still can’t keep up with demand, which is [good for businesses like Applied Materials](. Nvidia, also on a tear, can’t get enough chips to [make 3D processors]( for video games. Apple shut a store in Charleston, South Carolina, after [more than 20 employees]( were exposed to Covid-19. And [IBM closed its New York City office]( over health and safety concerns. Amazon obtained the rights to stream the Country Music Awards in an [exclusive deal](. Twitter agreed to most conditions set by the Nigerian government for [reinstating the service](, an official said. 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