The Television Academy and Amazon’s Prime Video have announced a six-year deal making the streaming service the exclusive global home of the Emmy Awards, beginning with the 2027 ceremony. The pact ends the awards show’s rotation among US broadcast networks — a tradition that cycled through ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC — and marks the first time the Emmys will have a single permanent home.
Free to watch, everywhere
Beginning next September, the ceremony will stream live and free — no Prime Video subscription required — in more than 240 countries and territories, according to the announcement. That free-access condition was reportedly non-negotiable for the Academy: its chair, Cris Abrego, said, “Television has never been more global, and the Emmys should be a celebration that the world can share.” Mike Hopkins, head of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, framed the deal as a chance to turn the Emmys into a global event for younger viewers who stream rather than watch broadcast television.
The context is a decades-long audience slide. This year’s ceremony, which aired on NBC, drew about 6.8 million viewers — down roughly 10 percent from the previous year, according to multiple reports cited in coverage of the deal — far below the nearly 22 million who watched in 2000. Nielsen data cited in reports put streaming at 49 percent of all TV viewing in July, versus 19.5 percent for broadcast.
The awards-show migration
The Emmys are not the first cultural institution to make the jump: the Academy Awards are set to leave ABC and stream live on YouTube worldwide starting in 2029, according to earlier reports. For Prime Video, the Emmys join a growing slate of live properties as the platform pushes beyond on-demand films and series — a shift that, like the concert-cinema boom we explored in our piece on film, vinyl and touring, reflects how audiences now experience live culture. And as Pinewood’s wartime history shows, the industry has reinvented its distribution channels before.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, though one report estimated $20–25 million per year. Whether a permanent streaming home reverses the ratings slide is the open question — but the Academy has decided that where its audience actually is matters more than where its audience used to be. Reporting note: this story was checked against at least two reputable reports or official records before publication, and it will be updated if the responsible authorities, leagues, companies or researchers publish materially new verified information.
