Amazon’s total content spending in 2025 will increase 10% to $22.4 billion, including video and music.
The numbers were revealed in the e-commerce giant’s 10,000 annual filing with the SEC on Friday, a day after Amazon reported its fourth-quarter 2025 financial results.
Total content spending of $22.4 billion includes licensing and production fees associated with content offered through Amazon Prime members, such as Prime Video and Amazon Music, as well as costs associated with digital subscriptions and content sold or rented.
According to Amazon’s filing, the video content it produces and licenses is “primarily monetized collectively as units known as movie groups” in each of the major regions where Prime membership is offered. As of December 31, 2025, our total cost of capital for video (primarily released content) and music was $21.3 billion (up 9% from $19.6 billion in the prior year).
Spending on content is the single largest spending item for entertainment companies, but not for Amazon. CEO Andy Jassy said during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call that the company plans to dramatically increase capital spending by 50% to $200 billion in 2026, driven by AI investments.
Amazon’s content spending includes rights fees paid to the NFL for its “Thursday Night Football” package of games, for which Amazon is estimated to pay the league about $1 billion annually. Season 4 of Prime Video’s “TNF” was the most watched to date, with average viewership up 16% to more than 15 million viewers, according to Amazon. Amazon’s sports portfolio includes the NBA, WNBA, and NWSL, as well as rights to the UEFA Champions League in certain European countries.
Meanwhile, Prime Video’s popular original series include “Fallout” (Season 2 will be released Dec. 16), “Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan,” “Reacher,” “Upload” and “Bosch.” Other series and films produced by Amazon MGM Studios include “The Red One,” “The Road House,” “The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power,” “The Cross,” and “The Idea of You.”
Amazon announced last fall that Prime Video now has more than 315 million monthly viewers worldwide, up from 200 million in mid-2024, and that Prime Video ads are now running in 16 countries.
Amazon’s ad revenue rose 23% to $21.32 billion in the fourth quarter, slightly more than expected. Revenue from Amazon’s subscription services rose 14% to $13.12 billion in the quarter. This includes annual and monthly fees associated with your Amazon Prime membership, digital video, audiobooks, digital music, e-books, and other non-AWS subscription services.
As of the end of 2025, the weighted average remaining life of Amazon’s capitalized video content is 3.2 years. This compares to 3.1 years reported in 2024 and 3.5 years in 2023. According to the company’s filing, it “continually reviews usage and viewing patterns that impact the amortization of capitalized video content and reflects any changes prospectively.”
Amazon noted that its licensing agreements for television shows, movies, other video programming, and music content for its customers “have a wide range of licensing provisions,” including both fixed and variable payment schedules. The company said, “If the license fee for a particular video or music title is determinable or reasonably estimable and that content is available to us, we recognize an asset and a corresponding liability for the unpaid amount.” “We reduce debt as payments are made and amortize assets to ‘cost of goods sold’ on an accelerated or straight-line basis based on estimated usage and viewing patterns.”
For Amazon’s original video content, production costs are capitalized and amortized primarily to “cost of goods sold” on an “accelerated basis according to estimated viewing patterns associated with the content.”
