The 2023/24 period marked yet another steady increase in the number of third-party titles appearing on Amazon Prime through acquisition deals. While Amazon’s growth in acquisitions has been more gradual than that of its rival Netflix, it has become a reliable buyer for multiple types of deals. Show Tracker highlights the extent of this activity in the scripted space.
Twelve titles were sold to Amazon Prime in multi-market first-window deals of varying sizes. These ranged from AMC-distributed titles such as ‘Interview with the Vampire’ and ‘The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live’, which appeared on the SVOD in India and across Latin America, to Lionsgate’s ‘The Continental’, which was acquired globally outside the US (where it was a Peacock Original) and branded as an Amazon Original at launch. The opportunity is broad enough for a distributor to secure a quick win with a multi-market window, but Amazon is clearly willing to acquire the right titles in individual markets as well.
The most active markets for single-territory acquisitions last season were the Netherlands, where Amazon acquired five brand-new series (including three from Banijay), and South Africa, where it acquired four brand-new series (half of which were from All3Media). Second windows accounted for less of Amazon’s acquisition activity, with the SVOD acquiring fewer than half the number of titles compared to the first window last season.
The US is Amazon’s biggest market in this regard, securing five titles from different distributors for the second window, including All3Media (‘Ridley’), Boat Rocker (‘Beacon 23’), Crown Media (‘The Way Home’), Lionsgate (‘The Serpent Queen’), as well as some vertical integration through its own arm for ‘Billy the Kid’, which previously debuted on MGM+ (then known as Epix).
3Vision’s Movie Tracker reveals that vertical integration has also supported Amazon Prime on the movie front in international markets, helping the SVOD gain an additional nine Pay-One titles on average, alongside their SVOD Original films.
Other distributors supporting Amazon Prime’s Pay-One slate internationally include NBCUniversal, which provides a slew of titles to the service in both Latin America and Canada, and Lionsgate, which supplies multiple titles to the SVOD in the Pay-One window across most markets. While Netflix in Canada struggles to acquire movies in the Pay-One window from major studios, Amazon’s deal with NBCUniversal allowed it to be the first home for high-profile titles like ‘Oppenheimer’.
Sony has been a reliable source of Pay-One titles for Amazon in Australia, where most are shared with local Pay-TV operator Foxtel, and in Italy. Amazon still looks beyond the major US studios for many titles across all the markets it operates in, with some markets like Germany heavily reliant on indie content to supplement its limited studio Pay-One content.
With Amazon generally producing fewer Originals than Netflix, both in terms of TV series and movies, it is no surprise that they have been more consistently turning to third parties to enhance their offering across international markets. However, with a continued rise in activity, particularly in multi-market first-window deals for series, Amazon is undoubtedly becoming an attractive sales prospect for many different types of distributors.
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