The Emmys leave broadcast TV for Prime Video in a six-year deal, and the show will be free to watch
Starting in 2027, Amazon’s streamer will be the exclusive home of the Primetime Emmys through 2032. It ends the four-network “wheel” that has rotated the show since the mid-1990s and makes the Emmys the first EGOT award show to go streaming-only.
The deal: The Television Academy and Prime Video signed a six-year agreement making the streamer the exclusive home of the Primetime Emmys from 2027 to 2032, The Hollywood Reporter reported. Next year’s ceremony will be the first since the awards began in 1949 not to air on a broadcast network, Variety said. Prime Video will put the telecast in front of its paywall, so anyone can watch it free, in the U.S. and in the more than 240 countries and territories it serves.
The money: Terms weren’t disclosed. Variety, citing sources, reported Prime Video will pay about $15 million a year for global rights, compared with roughly $8 million to $10 million a year that ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC paid for U.S. rights alone. Academy chair Cris Abrego called it “definitely an increase.”
Why the academy moved: Rotating between the four networks each year meant “starting over again with a new partner,” Abrego told THR, from producers to brand sponsors. “Exclusivity in the honors should never mean exclusivity in access,” he said of the free stream. Prime Video chief Mike Hopkins told Variety the company does not plan to make the show longer: “I think a three-hour award show is plenty.”
What else could move: Prime Video may also carry other academy programming, such as the Hall of Fame ceremony, and the future of the craft-focused Creative Arts Emmys, which have aired on FXX, is still being discussed, THR reported. Abrego told Variety the academy’s planned merger with the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, which runs the Daytime Emmys, could happen by mid-2027.
Context: The 2026 Emmys aired on NBC and Peacock three weeks ago, the last show under the old deal. The Oscars are set to move to YouTube starting with the 2029 ceremony.