Today Amazon reportedly contacted staff at Prime Video and Amazon’s MGM Studios to announce a new round of layoffs. This is the newest round of layoffs at Prime Video, with the last round being in late 2022.
According to Amazon’s video chief, Mike Hopkins, Amazon has “identified opportunities to reduce or discontinue investments in certain areas.” This comes from a memo emailed to staff that The Information received a copy of. Amazon will reportedly instead invest more on content for the services. Exactly what that means for some of Amazon’s current projects is unknown.
Recently it has been reported that Amazon wants to spend more on live spots. This move could help Amazon get ready for bidding on sports like the NBA, which will soon see its TV rights go up for renewal.
This news comes as Amazon reportedly laid off 500 employees at the live streaming service Twitch, or about 35% of its workforce, according to a report from Bloomberg. This comes as, in early 2023, Amazon laid off about 400 employees.
Twitch focuses heavily on streaming live gaming streams but has expanded in recent years to stream a wide range of content. Twitch, which was bought by Amazon in 2014, saw substantial growth in the summer of 2020. Now, Twitch is facing competition from newcomers and older services like YouTube, which has been pulling away some content creators.
Overall in the last few years, Amazon has been cutting back on staffing as it carefully reviews how it spends its money.
Cord Cutters News is reaching out to Amazon for comment on this news.