iWorld
Amazon Prime Video boasts 175mn+ viewers, investment in content & live sports to grow
KOLKATA: Video has emerged to be a key play for the tech giants, especially over the past year. After Google’s YouTube knocked over the industry with astounding ad revenue and viewership in the last quarter, and now, Amazon has also revealed how its streaming service Prime Video has fared in recent times.
In what may sound warning bells for market leader Netflix and upstart Disney+, Prime Video’s viewer base has surpassed 175 million. In a letter to shareholders, Amazon boss Jeff Bezos shared he’s proud to have Prime Video in the family.
“As Prime Video turns 10, over 175 million Prime members have streamed shows and movies in the past year, and streaming hours are up more than 70 per cent year over year. Amazon Studios received a record 12 Academy Award nominations and two wins. Upcoming originals include Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse, The Tomorrow War, The Underground Railroad, and much more,” wrote Bezos.
In mid-April, Bezos revealed that the e-commerce behemoth’s Prime service now has over 200 million subscribers, up 50 million from the beginning of 2020. The service includes fast free shipping, music, video, reading, gaming which is priced at Rs 129 per month, and Rs 999 per year in India.
The numbers are not only talking. Prime Video is making its way into critics’ mind too as it has shined in recent award ceremonies. It earned 12 Academy Award nominations across four films this year; moreover, Sound of Metal won an Oscar in the newly-created sound category.
Interestingly, the OTT is not limiting its video aspirations to original titles and movies but has thrown its hat into the competitive sports content too. “The live sports offering for Prime Video continues to grow internationally,” Bezos said in the letter. Very recently, it became the first streaming service to secure an exclusive national broadcast package from the prestigious NFL. It has ventured into cricket too, the most popular game in India, by acquiring the India territory rights for New Zealand cricket through 2025-2026. It may look at other popular cricket rights in India in the coming year to bolster its sports library.
The company looks at video as a component of broader prime membership. Prime members who watch video have higher free trial conversion rates, higher renewal rates, higher overall engagement, an Amazon spokesperson said in the earnings call.
“There’s great examples of places like Brazil where you launch a video only subscription for example that preceded the broader Prime membership with shipping components and that was as an example a great way to expose people to Amazon. And as we launched a broader Prime in Brazil, it was a great mechanism to get folks into that program,” he added.
The content spend is expected to grow and the investment will go beyond original content to boost the live sports portfolio.
Overall, the e-commerce giant has continued to cash in on our new shop-work-relax-from-home habits in the first three months of this year, reporting a huge rise in sales and a tripling of profits.
Amazon’s overall revenue has gone up by 44 per cent year-on-year basis to reach $108.5 billion revenue. Net income skyrocketed to $8.1 billion compared to the corresponding quarter of 2020, when it stood at $2.5 billion. As online shopping has been one of the businesses to benefit in the ongoing pandemic, the quarterly results show how the digital drive is still fuelling its business.
Net sales are expected to be between $110.0 billion and $116.0 billion for the next quarter, or to grow between 24 per cent and 30 per cent as against the second quarter 2020, the company guided. Operating income is expected to be between $4.5 billion and $8.0 billion. The company will also host its Prime Day event sometime in the second quarter.
iWorld
Bill Ackman makes a $64bn bid for Universal Music Group
The hedge fund boss wants to list the world’s biggest record label in New York and thinks he knows exactly what ails it
NEW YORK: Bill Ackman wants to buy the world’s biggest record label. Pershing Square Capital Management, the hedge fund run by the billionaire investor, submitted a non-binding proposal on Tuesday to acquire all outstanding shares of Universal Music Group in a business combination transaction worth roughly $64.4 billion (around 55.8 billion euros).
Under the terms of the offer, UMG shareholders would receive 9.4 billion euros in cash, equivalent to 5.05 euros per share, plus 0.77 shares of a newly created company, dubbed New UMG, for each share held. Pershing Square values the total package at 30.40 euros per share, a 78 per cent premium to UMG’s closing price on April 2.
The deal would see UMG merge with Pershing Square SPARC Holdings, with the combined entity incorporating as a Nevada corporation and listing on the New York Stock Exchange. New UMG would publish financial statements under US GAAP and become eligible for S&P 500 index inclusion. Pershing Square says the transaction is expected to close by year-end, with all equity financing backstopped by Ackman’s firm and its affiliates, and all debt financing committed at signing. The transaction would cancel 17 per cent of UMG’s outstanding shares, leaving New UMG with 1.541 billion shares outstanding.
Ackman has a long history with UMG. Pershing Square first bought approximately 10 per cent of the company from Vivendi in the summer of 2021 for around $4 billion, around the time of UMG’s listing on the Euronext Amsterdam exchange. He has since trimmed that position, raising around $1.4 billion from the sale of a 2.7 per cent stake in March 2025, and resigned from UMG’s board in May 2025, citing new executive and board obligations arising from recent investments.
His diagnosis of UMG’s troubles is blunt. The company’s stock has fallen around 33 per cent over the past twelve months on the Euronext Amsterdam exchange, and Ackman lays out six reasons why. These include uncertainty around the Bolloré Group’s 18 per cent stake in the company, the postponement of UMG’s US listing, the underutilisation of UMG’s balance sheet, the absence of a publicly disclosed capital allocation plan and earnings algorithm, a failure to reflect UMG’s 2.7 billion euro stake in Spotify in its valuation, and what Ackman calls suboptimal shareholder investor relations, communications and engagement.
The Bolloré stake has long cast a shadow over the company. Cyrille Bolloré stepped down from UMG’s board in July 2025 as the Bolloré Group battled the French financial markets regulator over its stake in Vivendi, which holds a further capital interest in UMG. UMG had confidentially filed a draft registration statement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in July 2025 for a proposed secondary listing in America, but put those plans on hold in March 2026, citing market conditions.
Ackman has kind words for UMG’s management, at least. “Since UMG’s listing, Lucian Grainge and the company’s management have done an excellent job nurturing and continuing to build a world-class artist roster and generating strong business performance,” he said. But he made his diagnosis plain: “UMG’s stock price has languished due to a combination of issues that are unrelated to the performance of its music business and importantly, all of them can be addressed with this transaction.”
In other words, Ackman believes UMG is a great business trapped inside a broken structure. If the board agrees, he intends to fix that, loudly and in New York.
