February 3, 2022
On Feb. 3, Amazon reported fourth-quarter (ended Dec. 31, 2021) proprietary online revenue (excluding third-party sellers) of $66 billion, about 1% lower than the $66.4 billion generated during the period of the previous year. The segment includes multimedia products available in physical and digital format, such as books, movies, television shows, video games, music and software sold on a transactional basis.
Subscription revenue, which includes Amazon Prime Video monthly fees, rose 15% to more than $8.1 billion from $7 billion a year ago.
“[With] the addition of new flagship entertainment like “Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” and “Thursday Night Football”, and a plethora of new capabilities we are developing in areas like Alexa, Ring, Grocery, Pharmacy, Amazon Care, Kuiper and Zoox, there is a lot to look forward to in the months and years to come,” CEO Andy Jassy said in a statement.
Subscribe HERE to the FREE daily Media Play News newsletter!
Entertainment highlights during the quarter included the launch of new series “The Wheel of Time,” starring Rosamund Pike, ranked No. 1 on the Nielsen Streaming Series Rankings the week of its premiere, with customers watching over a billion minutes of the series across its first three episodes.
Other Prime Video series releases included the new comedy “Harlem,” the adult animated comedy “Fairfax,” and the final season of sci-fi fan favorite “The Expanse.” Prime Video also announced that the first season of “Reacher,” a new series based on the international bestseller slaughter area by Lee Child, will be released on February 4, and that “Diabolical”, an animated spin-off of the global hit series The Boys, is scheduled to air in 2022.
The critically acclaimed original Prime Video movie Being the Ricardos, starring Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem and directed by Aaron Sorkin, premiering in theaters and on the streamer; The tender bar, starring Ben Affleck and directed by George Clooney, shown in theaters and on Prime Video; and the fourth and final installment in the franchise Hotel Transylvania: Transformaniafeaturing the voices of Selena Gomez and Andy Samberg, premiered on Prime Video.
Prime Video continued to win major awards for its original series and movies. Be the Ricardos was nominated for two Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards (Actress in a Lead Role Nicole Kidman and Male Actor in a Lead Role Javier Bardem) and three Critics Choice Awards (Lead Actress Nicole Kidman, Supporting Actor JK Simmons and Original Screenplay Aaron Sorkin). The tender bar was nominated for a SAG Award (Male Actor in a Supporting Role Ben Affleck). A hero, the foreign language feature film by Iranian director Asghar Farhadi, was nominated for a Critics Choice Award (foreign language film) and shortlisted for the Academy Awards (international feature film). The Underground Railroad, which garnered seven Emmy nominations in 2021, was nominated for three Critics Choice Awards (Limited Series, Lead Actress Thuso Mbedu and Supporting Actor William Jackson Harper) and two Independent Spirit Awards (New Scripted Series and Female Lead Thuso Mbedu) .
The quarter marked Prime Video’s highest viewership for live sports globally. The 2021-2022 “Thursday Night Football” season streaming on Prime Video and Twitch provided the highest average viewership per minute, a measure of the average number of devices streaming the weekly game in any given minute since Amazon announced acquired the shared rights in 2017.
In the UK, Manchester United’s football match against Arsenal on December 2, 2021 became the most-watched Premier League game ever broadcast on the service, with an estimated audience of over 4 million. Additionally, millions of rugby fans have been following the Autumn Nations series, the first comprehensive international competitive rugby union series featuring the best teams from the northern and southern hemisphere since 2019. In India, Prime Video made its first foray into live sports, showing cricket matches between New Zealand and Bangladesh.
Prime Video released 28 local originals internationally, including Maradona: Blessed Dream (Argentina), Burning (Australia), Inside Edge Season 3 (India), and The Ferragnez – The Series (Italy). New locally produced series and films launched in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Spain and the UK.
The ad-supported VOD platform IMDb TV has launched “Judy Justice,” featuring the Honorable Judy Sheindlin, a retired Manhattan Family Court judge and television judge for more than 25 years. The series marked Amazon Studios’ largest episode order for an original series of 120 episodes, and it’s the first series to offer audiences a daily release cadence.
Comments are closed.