Many Canadians have already been enjoying select programming on Amazon Prime Video for approximately two weeks, but they won’t have to wait much longer to use the streaming platform in an official capacity.
Today, during the CRTC’s hearing on renewal of TV licenses, Bell confirmed that Amazon’s on-demand streaming service will officially go live on December 1st.
During the opening presentation, Mary Ann Turcke, President of Bell Media, stated, “Now, a new global OTT (over-the-top) competitor — Amazon Prime — is entering the Canadian market in two days. So it’s not just out fellow Canadian broadcasters who will try to outbid us for first-run, original programming but it’s Netflix and Amazon, two entities that are not subject to the same regulatory requirements as us and that have astronomically more buying power than we do.”
Bell operates CraveTV. The company recently announced it surpassed 1 million subscribers. Meanwhile, Shomi, the joint venture between Rogers and Shaw, is set to shutter on November 30th.
According to latest stats from June, an estimated 5.2 million Canadians subscribe to Netflix, an increase of 1 million in the past year. The Los Gatos, California-based company generates some $600 million in revenues thanks to Canadian subscribers.
Unfortunately, there was no indication if the full Amazon Prime Video content will be available to Canadians or if it will be limited to select titles.
Related: How to watch Amazon Prime Video in Canada
[source] CRTC [/source] [via] Greg O’Brien [/via]
