Roku and Amazon Prime somehow manage to maturely negotiate streaming deal without public spectacle
Even with thebest streaming boxes, today’s media ecosystem is a patchwork of distribution deals and limited licensing, which occasionally leads to consumer frustration as services vanish without warning. We all remember theYouTube TV feuds of last year, and that’s just the most recent example. Reports in late 2021 claimed that Roku could be set to lose access to Amazon’s selection of video, but that is no longer a concern. Whew.
Roku is one of the older streaming media platforms (and there areplenty of alternativesthese days), and it has expanded far beyond its iconic purple boxes. Today, you can find Roku built into TVs from TCL and Hisense, many of which are sold on Amazon. Content providers are increasingly asking for more access to user data, which was a sticking point in the Google negotiations. Last year, The Information reported thatRoku and Amazon were having trouble coming to an agreement, and that could lead to the loss of both Prime VideoandIMDB TV, which Amazon bundles together in such deals.
Thankfully, Roku users have been spared the back-and-forth and missing content. Roku hasannounced a new “multi-year” dealto keep Amazon Prime Video and IMDB TV on its platform. The companies did not disclose any terms of the deal.
The brief statement from Roku doesn’t elaborate on any data-sharing concessions, but there probably are some. Roku subscribers might consider that a small price to pay for continued access to Amazon’s content, which is expanding in a big way. Bezos and co. just finalized an $8 billion deal to acquire MGM, and there’s aLord of the Ringsseries on the horizon. We can only assume this deal also means Roku’s ad-supported channel will continue working on Amazon’s Fire TV platform. I think they call that “synergy” in the advertising biz.
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