Amazon Offers Rare Look into Prime Video Numbers; Streamer Has More than 200 Million Customers
In a letter to shareholders, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy offered a refreshing dose of clarity regarding the status of Prime Video.
Just how big is Prime Video’s customer base? For years, the only way to answer this question was via speculation, as Amazon has steadfastly refused to make data like subscriber totals or the profitability of its streaming segment public for years. But in a recent letter to Amazon shareholders, company CEO Andy Jassy revealed that Prime Video had 200 million customers, an impressive number but one that comes with an important caveat.
- Prime Video’s 200 million subscribers put it behind only Netflix in terms of total customers.
- Every Amazon Prime subscriber gets access to Prime Video as part of their account.
- Jassy also suggested that Prime Video isn’t profitable on its own yet.
At first glance, this revelation of Prime Video’s subscriber numbers is a big story. But a little digging shows that former Amazon chief Jeff Bezos told shareholders in a 2021 letter that its Prime delivery service had 200 million global subscribers. Given that every Prime member gets access to Prime Video as a benefit of their subscription, and since Amazon does not provide details regarding how many standalone Prime Video subscribers it has, there’s no way to know if the true number of customers on the streamer has grown in the past few years or not.
Still, 200 million viewers would rank Prime Video’s customer base quite high among its peers. Only Netflix and its 260.28 million subscribers can claim to have more on a single streamer; Disney has around 219 million subscribers (not accounting for Disney Bundle overlap) between Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+, but the largest of these three services has just 149.6 million viewers on its own. No other subscription video streamer in the United States has more than 100 million subscribers.
At the very least, Jassy’s revelation demonstrates that Amazon did not see a massive cancel-reaction when it forced all current customers to either accept ads or shut down their subscription. Prime Video began showing ads on its existing streaming plan in late January, giving customers a more-expensive tier to sign up for if they wanted to stream ad-free.
Is Prime Video Profitable Yet?
Investors and analysts on Wall Street are no longer satisfied by hearing a streaming service has scaled effectively. These days, streamers have to show that they can be profitable in order to be rewarded with a decent stock price. As Warner Bros. Discovery has found out the hard way, even modest streaming profits aren’t enough to turn around tepid opinions on a company if that company’s linear channels are still seeing declining revenues.
Amazon’s stock price, on the other hand, is mostly predicated on the performance of its online retail segment. That part of the company brings in hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue every year, which means that Amazon has the luxury of building its streaming platform in any manner it chooses without having to rely on money from Prime Video to drive other parts of its business.
Jassy’s words from the shareholder letter make it sound as if Prime Video isn’t profitable on its own yet, but it could be well on the way.
“We have increasing conviction that Prime Video can be a large and profitable business on its own,” Jassy wrote. “This confidence is buoyed by the continued development of compelling, exclusive content (e.g. ‘Thursday Night Football,’ ‘Lord of the Rings,’ ‘Reacher,’ ‘The Boys,’ ‘Citadel,’ ‘Road House,’ etc.), Prime Video customers’ engagement with this content, growth in our marketplace programs (through our third-party Channels program, as well as the broad selection of shows and movies customers rent or buy), and the addition of advertising in Prime Video.”
Forcing all 200 million current viewers to stomach ads or pay more to watch without them will certainly help Prime Video achieve profitability more quickly. Is a crackdown on sharing passwords next? Disney has announced it will begin enforcing rules to stop streaming account sharing this summer, and WBD has assured viewers that Max will soon introduce its own measures to stop multiple households from using the same login credentials. Prime Video could join them if Amazon sees sharing of passwords as a meaningful hurdle to reaching profitability for the streamer.
There’s no denying that Amazon’s announcement of 200 million Prime Video customers is impressive. But customers may look askance at unpopular measures taken by other streaming platforms to achieve profitability such as password-sharing restrictions if Prime Video implements them, as Amazon’s monstrous yearly incomes do not paint the picture of a company struggling to evolve in a changing media landscape.
Amazon Prime Video
Amazon Prime Video is a subscription video streaming service that includes on-demand access to 10,000+ movies, TV shows, and Prime Originals like “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” “Jack Ryan,” “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “The Boys,” and more. Subscribers can also add third-party services like Max, Showtime, STARZ, and dozens more with Amazon Prime Video Channels. Prime Video also offers exclusive live access to NFL Thursday Night Football.