Amazon's Prime Video Amazon competed directly with Netflix via its Amazon Prime membership service. In 2020, indi- viduals and households could become an Amazon Prime member for a fee of $119 per year or $12.99 per month (after a one-month free trial); there was a discounted price for students of $59 per year of $6.49 per month. Membership in just Prime Video was $8.99 per month. Going into 2020, Amazon announced that it had over 150 million Amazon Prime members globally.2 While Amazon had origin- ally created its Amazon Prime membership program as a means of providing unlimited two-day shipping (more recently. one-day shipping in many locations and two-hour grocery delivery in 2,000 cities) on Prime-eligible items to customers who ordered mer- chandise from Amazon and wanted to receive their orders quickly, in 2012 Amazon began including movie and music streaming as a standard benet of Prime membershipAmazon's video streaming service was called "Prime Video." Amazon Prime members were not, however, eligible to view every title in the Prime Video library for free; titles that were not Prime-eligible could be watched on a pay- pervicw basis or else purchased. Going into 2020, many Amazon Prime members did not utilize their Prime Video membership benefit (Amazon did not disclose the overall percentage). Another video bene- fit of Amazon Prime membership was the ability to subscribe to over 100 premium channels with Prime Video Channels subscriptions. In 2010, Amazon established Amazon Studios to oversee the development and production of new inhouse original movies and multi-episode series: approximately 200 new original titles were released during 2015-2018. A 2019 report by Streaming Observer, an independent news site covering streaming industry news and reviews of movies. said that Amazon's Prime Video content library contained 12,461 titles versus 3,839 for Netflix and 2,336 for Hulu.3 However, according to the same Streaming Observer report, Netflix had 592 titles that were \"Certified Fresh\" by Rotten Tomatoes (the leading online aggregator of movie and TV show reviews) versus 232 such films on Prime Video and 223 on Hulu. Additionally, the report said almost 16 percent of all movies on Netflix were \"critically acclaimed\" compared to just 1.3 percent on Prime Video. But in 201? and continuing forward, Amazon began a strategic initiative to upgrade its content library. with both higher caliber new original con- tent and licensed content. Amazon paid the National Football League $65 million a year for three seasons starting with 2201':ll season to live stream Thursday Night f-borbaii games globally to Prime Video mem- bers in 200 countries (these broadcasts attracted more than 18 million total viewers over 11 games in 2017). Amazon Studios spent a reported $250 million for licensing right to Lord of the Rings. with plans for spending up to $1 billion to produce 5 seasons of episodes. Amazon Studios spent an estimated $5-St'i billion on original content videos in 2019, releasing new titles monthly. including new seasons of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, Emmy-winning 772i? Marvelous Mrs. Mattel, Bosch, Sneaky Pete. Good Omens, Carnival Row, The Man in the High Castie, The Boys, Emmy-winning Fieabag, The Romanom, Patriot, American Goals, Preacher: and The Grand Tour Prime members watched double the hours of original movies and TV shows on Prime Video in the fourth quarter of 2019 campared to the fourth quarter of 2018. and Amazon Originals received a record 88 nominations and 26 wins at the Oscar, Emmy, and Golden Globe awards shows.4