Listen to this articleAmazon detailed the prices of its content enterprise throughout its fourth-quarter earnings on Thursday, citing that its content bills jumped to $16.6 billion in 2022, a 28% enhance from $13 billion in 2021.
According to Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky, round $7 billion of that figure went in the direction of Amazon Originals, live sports activities programming, and licensed third-party video content included with Prime. In 2021, Amazon had spent $5 billion on these three areas of content, for comparability.
While the corporate didn’t break down precisely how a lot it invests in every title, it’s reported that Amazon is spending more than $1 billion yearly for its NFL streaming rights. Plus, the first season of “The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power,” the most-watched Amazon original sequence worldwide, cost over $500 million.
Streaming companies know by now that original content is the important thing to standing out amongst rivals and lowering churn. Amazon is probably going boosting its content investments to higher compete with Disney, Netflix, and HBO Max. Disney spends roughly $33 billion on content, whereas each Netflix and HBO Max spend a reported $18 billion. *Note {that a} portion of Disney’s figure goes in the direction of sports activities rights—round $11 billion.) Paramount+ also plans to extend streaming content spending to $6 billion by 2024, it not too long ago said.
Amazon didn’t report subscriber numbers for its streaming enterprise. However, Olsavsky boasted in the course of the earnings call that its Prime Video content is a “strong driver of Prime member engagement and new Prime member acquisition,” Olsavsky said.
For occasion, “The Rings of Power” was considered by over 100 million world viewers with more than 24 billion minutes streamed. The firm added that, throughout its launch window, “The Lord of the Rings” sequence helped drive more Prime sign-ups worldwide than any earlier Prime Video content.
Amazon also touted that Thursday Night Football reached the youngest median age viewers of any NFL broadcast package deal since 2013, and viewership amongst followers ages 18 to 34 years old elevated by 11% in comparison with the 2021 season.
The firm claimed the TNF video games had a median viewers of 11.3 million viewers. The first exclusive TNF game on Prime Video had 15.3 million viewers. Before the 2022 season started, Amazon anticipated to succeed in about 12.5 million viewers per week.
Other original content added to the streamer in 2022 consists of “My Policeman” starring Harry Styles, the third season of “Jack Ryan” and the Western drama “The English,” amongst others.
Amazon is also benefiting from its 2022 acquisition of MGM for $8.5 billion. The firm noted that “Wednesday,” the MGM-produced sequence on Netflix, premiered at No. 1 on Nielsen’s weekly streaming charts and earned two Golden Globe nominations. In December, “Wednesday” turned the second hottest English-language sequence on Netflix, surpassing 1.02 billion complete hours considered in simply three weeks since its streaming release. Over 150 million households watched the show.
Prime members in the U.S. also noticed the return of HBO Max as a Prime Video Channel providing, giving prospects entry to roughly 15,000 hours of premium content.
Amazon ramped up content spending to $16.6B in 2022, together with $7B on originals by Lauren Forristal initially printed on TechCrunch
