Amazon, Roku & Sky Relentlessly Focused On “Range & Convenience,” Say UK Bosses

Max Goldbart
·2 min read

UPDATED with Sky quotes: The U.S. giants are relentlessly focused on consumer convenience and access to content, according to the UK bosses of Amazon, Sky and Roku this morning.

The future of TV-watching is about “range and convenience,” said Amazon Prime Video UK MD Chris Bird, as he floated the notion that there has “never been a better time to be an audience member with the breadth and selection of what’s on offer.”

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“Everything is available all of the time,” Bird added, speaking at the Deloitte & Enders Media and Telecoms 2023 & Beyond Conference. “It’s about how conveniently you can access the content you want to watch at the time you want to watch through the mediums that we can provide.”

Bird praised Prime Video for being “available pretty ubiquitously,” adding: “We see this as a key, important factor.”

Sky UK CEO Stephen van Rooyen said rival aggregators such as Amazon and Apple are no longer competitors but “cross supply each other.”

“You are as likely to find us on an Amazon device as an Apple device,” he added. “Reaching audiences with these mixed modes of distribution is as important to them as to us. Consumers in the end will decide.”

Roku Discovery

Roku UK Director Richard Halton said connected TVs, which bring together multiple streamers offerings with traditional networks, have also become “ubiquitous,” as he communicated Roku’s desire to “bring into our global supply chain the extraordinary price points that you see for these devices.”

“The value is about connecting content with the consumer and how you work with content partners in a respectful way,” added Halton.

According to Halton, some of Roku’s recently-launched discovery tools will be rolled out to the UK soon, which take a simple approach to curation.

He flagged the example of Women’s Sports Zone, which launched yesterday and brings together the Monday night women’s sports game regardless of provider on Roku TVs.

“Being able to curate what is still quite a disparate landscape of events is incredibly powerful to the consumer,” said Halton. “Streaming sports feels like it’s mainstream. Half of the Super Bowl was watched on Roku.”

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