Amazon Prime Video

Amazon Prime Video is Amazon's film and television streaming service in the United Kingdom. Its British history began with LoveFilm, the DVD rental and streaming company Amazon acquired in 2011, and took its modern form on 26 February 2014, when LoveFilm Instant was rebranded as Prime Instant Video and folded into Amazon's Prime membership. Renamed Prime Video, the service combines a large library of films and series, Amazon Originals such as The Grand Tour, add-on channels and rentals, and — uniquely among the big streamers in Britain — live sport, including Premier League football.

Because Prime Video is bundled with Prime delivery membership, its reach is unusually wide. Audience measurement body Barb put Prime Video in 13.6 million UK homes in 2025, about 46 per cent of households, making it the UK's second-largest subscription streaming service after Netflix. Its British story is one of absorption and expansion: a beloved rental brand disappeared into a membership bundle, and the resulting service grew into a major commissioner of British programmes and a rights-holder in the country's most valuable sport.

LoveFilm: the British foundation

LoveFilm was established in 2004 and became Europe's biggest DVD rental company, mailing DVDs to subscribers who returned them by post, and later adding streaming. At its height it boasted about 1.4 million subscribers in the UK and more than two million across its territories, including Germany and the Netherlands. Amazon, which already held a stake, acquired LoveFilm outright in January 2011, increasing its share from 32 per cent to 100 per cent at a time when Netflix was reported to be planning a UK entry.

For three years the LoveFilm brand continued, competing as LoveFilm Instant against Netflix after the American service launched in Britain in January 2012. Behind the scenes, Amazon was building the streaming catalogue: it said it had more than tripled selection since LoveFilm became part of the Amazon family, added high-definition video and launched apps for games consoles, smart televisions and mobile devices. The rental-by-post business continued separately until Amazon closed LoveFilm by Post on 31 October 2017, ending the last remaining part of the original company.

The 2014 rebrand: Prime Instant Video

On 21 February 2014 Amazon announced that LoveFilm Instant would become part of Prime, and on 26 February 2014 it relaunched in the UK and Germany as Prime Instant Video. The change bundled video into the Prime membership of unlimited one-day delivery and Kindle book lending, and the price of a full Prime membership rose from £49 to £79 a year, though existing Prime members received video at no extra cost until renewal and existing LoveFilm subscribers could remain on their £5.99-a-month streaming-only arrangement.

Amazon presented the relaunch as the UK's most complete digital video service. Launch content highlighted in coverage included the films The Hangover Part II and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and series such as The Walking Dead and Vikings, whose second season was an early exclusive draw. Tim Leslie, Amazon's vice president for Instant Video in the UK and Germany, stressed the expanded selection, HD and new device apps as the service positioned itself directly against Netflix, which had passed a million British members far faster than LoveFilm's owner had expected.

In September 2015 the word Instant was dropped in the United States and the service was renamed simply Amazon Video, with Prime Video becoming the familiar name for the member offer in Britain as well.

Amazon Originals and British productions

Original programming gave Prime Video its British identity. Amazon Studios had premiered its first comedies, Alpha House and Betas, in 2013, and in January 2015 Transparent became the first series from a streaming service to win the Golden Globe for Best Television Series — Musical or Comedy, signalling that a retailer-owned streamer could win television's major prizes.

The defining British commission followed on 30 July 2015, when Amazon announced it had hired Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May, after their departure from Top Gear, to make a new motoring show. The programme became The Grand Tour, launched in November 2016. Former Top Gear executive producer Andy Wilman said each episode had a budget of around £4.5 million, about nine times that of Top Gear. Amazon's founder Jeff Bezos described the deal as very expensive, but worth it. The show, made in Britain and watched worldwide, proved Prime Video could outbid broadcasters for the country's biggest entertainment talent.

Later investment broadened beyond entertainment, with further Amazon Originals and British-linked drama, comedy and documentary commissions keeping the UK catalogue anchored in Amazon Studios productions as well as licensed films and series, while the service also offered transactional rentals and purchases and add-on channel subscriptions alongside the Prime library.

Live sport: Premier League football and beyond

Sport is Prime Video's clearest point of difference in Britain. Amazon had already streamed tennis, including the US Open and ATP Tour events, and NFL American football, before making its biggest move in June 2018: it secured a Premier League package of 20 matches a season for three seasons from 2019/20, at no extra cost to UK Prime members. The package comprised two complete fixture rounds — the first December midweek round and the festive Boxing Day round — featuring every Premier League team.

Its first matches, on 3 to 5 December 2019, were a landmark: the first time a full round of Premier League fixtures had been shown live in the UK, and the first time a pure streaming service had shown live Premier League football in Britain, with fixtures including Manchester United against Tottenham Hotspur and the Merseyside derby between Liverpool and Everton. Premier League executive chairman Richard Scudamore welcomed Amazon as an exciting new partner, and Amazon's European Prime Video vice president Jay Marine emphasised that every member could watch their own team live across the two December rounds. Amazon's football documentaries, including the All or Nothing series following Manchester City, complemented the live rights.

Audience and market position

Prime Video benefits from a distribution advantage no rival can copy: every Prime delivery member has access by default, whether or not they joined for television. Barb's figures capture both the scale and the caveat. In the third quarter of 2025, 13.6 million UK homes — 46 per cent of households — had access to Prime Video, down slightly from 13.7 million the previous quarter, second only to Netflix. Industry commentary regularly notes that a share of Prime members rarely or never use the video service.

The advertising picture also differs from rivals. Where Netflix built an advertising tier gradually to about a third of its UK homes, Barb reported that around 87 to 89 per cent of Prime Video homes were on its advertising tier, reflecting Amazon's decision to make advertising the default for the service, with members able to pay extra to remove it. That gave Prime Video an advertising reach of roughly 12 million UK households, the largest of any streamer on that measure.

How the service works

Prime Video is watched through Amazon's apps on smart televisions, games consoles, streaming players, mobile devices and Kindle Fire tablets, and through web browsers — the same broad device pattern established at the 2014 relaunch. A Prime membership combines video with one-day delivery on millions of products and other benefits, an arrangement that has defined its value proposition since the £79 relaunch bundle of 2014 replaced the £49 delivery-only membership.

Alongside the included library, the UK service sells and rents newer films and offers additional channels by subscription, so a single Prime Video home screen mixes included, rented and add-on content. That hybrid model — part Netflix-style library, part video shop, part sports broadcaster — reflects Amazon's wider retail business in a way no other major UK streamer attempts.

Relationship with Netflix and the market

Prime Video's UK launch format was a direct response to Netflix, and the rivalry has structured the British streaming market ever since. Amazon absorbed the strongest local competitor, LoveFilm, before Netflix arrived, then used Prime's delivery base to build the only service within sight of Netflix's household reach. Competition between the two drove investment in British originals, from The Grand Tour to Netflix's royal and school dramas, and in premium rights, most visibly Premier League football.

Disney+ took third place in the UK market within months of its 2020 launch, according to research firm Omdia, but did not displace either leader: the same research put Netflix's market presence far ahead, with Prime Video second. That two-tier structure — Netflix first, Prime Video second, the studio and broadcaster services behind — has remained the pattern in Barb's household figures into the mid-2020s.

Legacy

Prime Video's legacy in Britain is threefold. It ended the LoveFilm era, closing both the streaming brand in 2014 and the postal service in 2017, and replaced Britain's best-known rental company with a bundle most customers held for shopping rather than viewing. It demonstrated, with The Grand Tour, that global streamers would compete for Britain's biggest presenters and formats. And it broke the broadcasters' hold on top-flight live football, streaming complete Premier League rounds to the nation for the first time in December 2019.

Key facts

• UK origin: LoveFilm, acquired in full by Amazon in January 2011
• Prime Video launch: 26 February 2014, as Prime Instant Video, replacing LoveFilm Instant
• Membership: Bundled with Amazon Prime; Prime rose from £49 to £79 a year at the 2014 relaunch
• Signature British original: The Grand Tour, announced in July 2015 with Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May
• Sport: 20 live Premier League matches a season from 2019/20, including complete December midweek and Boxing Day rounds
• Reach: 13.6 million UK homes in the third quarter of 2025, according to Barb — the UK's second-largest subscription streaming service

Amazon Prime Video turned a postal rental company into a cornerstone of British streaming — and, every December of its rights deal, into the nation's football broadcaster.