Amazon’s over-the-top businesses (including IMDb TV, Twitch, live sports and Amazon’s News app among others) have grown to 120+ million monthly viewers. The free, ad-supported IMDb TV, which is getting a mobile app, has seen its viewership rise 138 percent year-over-year, making it a rival to similar ad-supported streamers including Fox’s Tubi, ViacomCBS’s Pluto TV and Roku’s The Roku Channel. Amazon’s exclusive rights to NFL’s “Thursday Night Football” will begin a year earlier than originally planned, with the 2022-2023 season.

TechCrunch reports that “Amazon leverages IMDb TV to help it sell its own media devices by promising users easy access to free, streaming content,” which has resulted in the majority of viewers using Fire TV.

More recently, IMDb TV has become available on Roku, Chromecast with Google TV, PlayStation 4 consoles, Xbox One and Series X devices, LG Smart TVs, Android TV and others. The standalone mobile app is slated to launch on iOS and Android in the summer.

At its first ever NewFronts presentation, Amazon “told advertisers about IMDb TV’s current user base, noting that 62 percent were in between ages 18 and 49 …  and they spend 5.5 hours per week on the app, on average.”

It also described its upcoming TV slate, with unscripted series “Luke Bryan: My Dirt Road Diary,” “Bug Out” and “Untitled Jeff Lewis Project” and scripted releases “Blessed and Highly Favored,” “Greek Candy,” “Primo,” “The Fed,” and “The Pradeeps of Pittsburgh, PA.” Also on tap is an original series to be adapted from music duo Tegan and Sara’s memoir “High School.”

The Wall Street Journal reports that “initially, Amazon’s deal with the NFL called for the tech giant to begin streaming games in the 2023-24 season … [but] current rights holder Fox Corp. agreed to exit its existing deal for the package a season early.” Amazon’s 10-year deal with the NFL is to stream 15 games per season on its Prime Video platform.

This is “the first time the NFL sold a package of games exclusively to a streaming service,” and both Amazon vice president of global sports video Marie Donoghue and the NFL applauded “the decision to accelerate the launch of ‘TNF’ on Amazon for the 2022 season.” WSJ notes that, “the games Amazon streams will only be available on television in the local markets of the two teams playing.”

The $1.2 billion Amazon deal also “marked a significant increase in fees from the average of $660 million a year Fox had been paying.”

Related:
Amazon Had Sales Income of €44bn in Europe in 2020 But Paid No Corporation Tax, The Guardian, 5/4/21