Peacock Bows to Amazon: SVOD Power Plays Continue

29 August 2025 - NBCUniversal’s Pesacock has just inked a deal to join Amazon’s Prime Video Channels, making its ad-free Premium Plus tier ($17/mo or $170/yr) available to Prime’s massive audience. If Apple TV+ signing on in late 2024 wasn’t enough of a signpost, Peacock’s move cements Amazon’s dominance as the gatekeeper to subscription audiences (at least for those outside the Netflix and Disney families).

The obvious impact is financial. Peacock has been trimming losses—$101M in Q2, down from $348M a year ago—and this deal accelerates the march toward profitability by tapping into Prime’s 200+ million global subscribers. And let’s not ignore the timing: catalog overlap between Peacock and Prime has nearly doubled since 2022, signaling this partnership was already in the works. Plus, Peacock brings live anchors like Sunday Night Football, the Premier League, and the Olympics—content that plays perfectly inside Amazon’s plug-and-play bundle.

So how does this affect the indie market?It’s a big headline, and perhaps a harbinger of Amazon’s monopoly moves, but the impact to independent films will likely be small. I don’t expect this to loosen the Pay 1 bottleneck just yet. However, for films that would already be on Peacock’s radar today, I suspect licensing fees are going to rise in filmmakers’ favor after a couple quarters of that sweet, sweet Amazon cashflow.

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