Amazon expanding Prime Video worldwide in December, promoting the expansion through the show The Grand Tour from former Top Gear hosts
Abhimanyu Ghoshal / The Next Web :
Context & Ripple Effects
Amazon spent late 2015 turning Prime Video into a bundle hub, first reported by Bloomberg and then delivered as Showtime and Starz arriving as Prime add-ons. The December worldwide push announced here is the next step: taking that assembled catalog outside the markets where Prime exists at all.
The choice of The Grand Tour as the promotional vehicle matters because the former Top Gear hosts carry a pre-built international audience — exactly the demand the expansion needs on day one. The rollout's final shape, per later coverage, is a 200-plus-country launch excluding China, free for existing Prime members and $5.99/month elsewhere.
First-order effects
- Prime members outside Amazon's established markets get Prime Video at no additional cost starting in December, while viewers in countries without a Prime option get a standalone $5.99/month tier.
- The Grand Tour becomes Amazon's global acquisition campaign, converting the former Top Gear hosts' international fanbase into the launch audience for the expanded service.
Second-order effects
- Netflix faces a direct competitor operating in the same 200-plus-country footprint with a retail membership subsidizing video costs, pressuring its pricing and local-content spend in newly opened markets.
- The add-on partners from the 2015 bundling push — Showtime, Starz and similar services — gain potential international distribution through Prime Channels as the platform's reach widens.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, subscription video consolidates around a handful of global platforms whose originals double as marketing for a broader commerce membership, leaving regional services to compete on local licensing alone.
- Video shifts further from a profit center to a retention engine inside Amazon's ecosystem — a structure later reflected in Amazon touting Prime Video ads reaching 315M viewers across series, sports and free channels.
The trend: Streaming is moving from region-by-region licensing businesses to globally launched platforms, where exclusive originals front a membership bundle rather than stand alone.