Everyone wants the reach, few understand the shelf.
On Prime Video UK, genre and price decide where you land. This is about reading the shelf before you launch.
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If you want to be in front of 13.6 million UK homes, reaching 46% of households, there’s no way around it, you have to consider launching as a Channel on Prime Video UK.
For viewers, it is frictionless. They pay for Prime, search for a show, a genre or a team, and get nudged into “add this channel for X pounds a month.”
For streamers, it is a trade. You trade direct control, attribution and first party data for reach, billing simplicity and a chance to live in the same mall as Apple TV, Paramount+, ITVX Premium and dozens of specialist streamers.
The real question then becomes where on that shelf do you belong.
You step into a very specific storefront in the UK where film comfort, prestige scripted series, niche fandoms, kids sanity savers and brutally priced sports all sit side by side.
This piece is about understanding that shelf before you launch.
Today at a glance:
The shape of the UK shelf
Pricing: the UK curve
Sports: the two tier ecosystem
Fandom: who people will ‘fight’ for
The low end: impulse and nostalgia
What this means if you are launching
Mentioned in this edition : Apple TV+, Paramount+, ITVX Premium, TNT Sports, Curzon, BFI Player, MUBI, Lionsgate+, Shudder, Arrow, Full Moon, Studiocanal Presents, Crunchyroll, HiDive, KOCOWA, CJ ENM Selects, Shout! Factory TV, Daily Burn, Gaia, Nautical Channel, Echoboom Sports, Squash TV, H&C TV, Premier Sports, NBA League Pass, NFL Game Pass, Pokémon, Hoichoi, Simply South, Pinoy Box Office, Wi-flix, Pash.
The shape of the UK shelf
Amazon Channels UK is a curated add on layer that sits on top of Prime Video. Viewers pay for Prime, then bolt on extra channels to fix specific jobs: more films, safer kids TV, niche docs, hardcore fitness or one big sports addiction.
The UK line up in your dataset counts 77 channels. Around half of them are Film and TV services, with the rest split across Sports, Documentary, Kids, Entertainment and Music. That alone tells you how Amazon frames the UK: cinematic & television comfort at the core, with specialist fandoms glued around it.
The dominant bloc is Film and TV with 37 channels. This includes heavy hitters like Apple TV, Paramount +, ITVX Premium, Curzon, BFI Player, MUBI, Lionsgate+, and a long list of genre players such as Shudder, Arrow, Full Moon, and Studiocanal Presents. If you are “another great film and series service,” you are competing in a crowded aisle, not in a vacuum.
Around that, you have: