GATINEAU – The long-anticipated expansion of Amazon Prime Video into Canada could happen as early as December 1.
At least Mary Ann Turcke, Bell Media president, believes it, having told the CRTC as much on Tuesday during the company’s license renewal hearing.
"Now, a new global OTT competitor – Amazon Prime – is entering the Canadian market in two days. So it's not just our fellow Canadian broadcasters who will try to outbid us for 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 told the regulator in her opening statement.
"And Amazon is just the next one in a potential universe of six worldwide brands that we will have to compete against," she added.
Neither executives nor spokespeople at Amazon responded to requests for comment on their Canadian plans on Tuesday.
However, Amazon is telling Canadian Prime customers Video is coming Friday, said Turcke. In the U.S. an Amazon Prime subscription costs $99 a year, less than what Netflix and CraveTV costs – and Amazon Prime comes with free delivery of goods bought on Amazon.
Turcke is understandably focused on the Canadian market, and outside the CRTC hearing room told reporters she expects a "soft launch" by Amazon into Canada on Friday, just as Bell Media did bringing iHeart Radio across the border.
Market watchers for some time predicted Jeff Bezos' video streaming service is looking well beyond Canada to play catch-up with Netflix with a global roll-out of Amazon Prime Video into over 200 markets and that could be the launch on Friday.
As well, any international expansion would incur bigger video content expenditures by Amazon, likely by another $1 billion to $2 billion in 2017, as the streaming video service continues buying up global rights to TV product. "That would bring AMZN's annual content expenditure in line with Netflix, which disclosed ~$6B content budget on P&L basis for 2017," Jefferies analyst Brian Fitzgerald said in a November 18 investment note about Amazon.
Amazon currently operates its streaming video service in the U.S., the U.K., Japan, Germany and Austria, but talk of an international expansion by Amazon Prime Video gained currency when former Top Gear president Jeremy Clarkson, and now host of Amazon's The Grand Tour, tweeted that his new show was going global in December.
In Canada, how much Amazon content Canadian subscribers will be able to view will be constricted by rights issues.
How Amazon series already airing or streaming in Canada, including via the Shomi service set to shutter on December 1, will fare going forward is complicated by the shows having been sold into Canada on a piecemeal basis via deals with individual studios.
Amazon Prime shows like Transparent, that Shomi licensed could become available after Dec. 1 if they land on another Rogers platform.
The alternative is renegotiating an exit from the contractual deals for the Amazon shows, and putting the series back into the market.
Meanwhile, Crave TV will continue to stream its own Amazon offerings, said Turcke.
"Obviously, the titles that we have our rights to, we maintain," Bell Media Turcke said outside the CRTC hearings room. “They are spending a lot of money on original content so their service is going to get stronger as it goes but for Crave, it’s another competitor and it means we have to hunker down and we have to compete harder in that space.”
With files from Greg O'Brien
