PRIMED FOR STREAMING
Amazon enters video market
Amazon Prime Video is officially available in Canada after months of speculation.
Seattle-based Amazon.com Inc. announced Wednesday its streaming service that produces original content and rivals Netflix is available in more than 200 countries, including Canada. The service is available for no extra cost to existing Prime customers who pay an annual fee of $79, making it the cheapest streaming service on a monthly basis.
Canadians now have a choice to stream video from Amazon, Net- flix (about $10 per month) and CraveTV ($7.99 per month), Bell Media’s streaming service that it says recently surpassed one million subscribers.
Industry watchers expected Amazon to launch the streaming service in Canada on Dec. 1, the day after Rogers Communications Inc. and Shaw Communications Inc. killed their joint service, Shomi. Shomi had the rights to Amazon original series including Transparent.
In a regulatory hearing two weeks ago, Bell Media president Mary Ann Turcke expressed concerns about a new foreign competitor, claiming it would enter the market on Dec. 1. “So it’s not just our fellow Canadian broadcasters who will try to outbid us for the first run, original programming but it’s Netflix and now Amazon, two entities that are not subject to the same regulatory requirements as us and that have astronomically more buying power than we do,” Turcke said.
Netflix has an estimated five million subscribers in Canada, although it will not reveal its exact numbers. Nor will Amazon reveal Prime membership statistics on a country-by-country basis, stating only that there are tens of millions worldwide.
Based on Amazon’s popularity in Canada — an estimated five million households had bought something from Amazon.ca in the last six months of the 6.6 million households that have an account relationship with the retailer, according to Solutions Research Group data from October — the streaming service could make it tough for Crave to compete.
“So when these consumers click on Amazon they see a promo for this service — it’s an incredible scale advantage over Crave and I will say even Netflix in terms of driving 30-day trials,” SRG president Kaan Yigit said in an email.