The Television Academy announced Tuesday morning that the Emmy Awards will stream on Amazon's Prime Video for six years, starting with the September 2027 ceremony. The show will be free to watch, with no subscription, in more than 240 countries and territories. That ends the "wheel deal," in which ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC have taken turns airing the show since the mid-1990s. It also ends the Emmys' run on broadcast television, which goes back to NBC's first national telecast in 1955. NBC aired the last wheel ceremony on Sept. 14, and 6.8 million people watched across NBC and Peacock, down about 10% from the year before. Network executives had complained that the Emmys "had become a three-hour commercial for streaming services," the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday. Variety reported last month that at least one network, believed to be Fox, was dropping out of the wheel.

The Academy says the wheel was the problem

Television Academy chairman Cris Abrego says one home, free to everyone, beats starting over every year.

Rotating networks meant rebuilding the show every year. Cris Abrego, chairman of the Television Academy, told the Los Angeles Times the Academy was "essentially starting over every year with the creative process" and building new sponsor relationships each time. He told TheWrap the wheel "was difficult to help grow the Emmys while constantly rotating." He told The Hollywood Reporter the deal was "truly an opportunity to rethink the model and not simply just renew the deal."

Free access was the one thing the Academy wouldn't trade. "Access was non-negotiable," Abrego said. Amazon usually keeps live events like NFL games behind the Prime paywall, and the Emmys will be an exception. Abrego says the show should be "a celebration that the world can share." He called the broadcast networks "tremendous stewards of the Emmys for many years."

The Academy also gets paid more. The four networks paid roughly $8 million to $10 million a year, for U.S. rights only. Amazon is paying between $15 million and $25 million a year for worldwide rights. Variety and Deadline report different figures.

Abrego doesn't expect competitors to object. Variety asked whether competitors would balk now that the Emmys sit at one platform. "I don't think they will," Abrego said. "All the industry are partners."

And Amazon thinks it can make the show bigger

Prime Video chief Mike Hopkins wants a younger, global audience, and he says six years is just the start.

Amazon wants the Emmys to be a global event. Mike Hopkins, who runs Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, told the Los Angeles Times: "Our ambition here is to make this a global event that celebrates the biggest stars on television around the world." He told TheWrap Amazon wants to change the show in a way that could make it "bigger and younger."

The audience already moved to streaming. In July, streaming took 49% of U.S. television viewing, and broadcast took under 20%. Abrego says the line between broadcast and streaming "is becoming less meaningful every year." Hopkins says streaming the Emmys free "is another way we're delivering the best in entertainment to our customers worldwide." "This is a six-year deal, and we hope it'll be much longer than that," he said.

The Oscars are going the same way. The film academy announced in December that the Oscars move to YouTube in 2029, after ABC's deal ends with the 100th ceremony in 2028. The Emmys will get there two years earlier.

Still, the critics say moving the show won't fix it

Variety's Clayton Davis says the problems are in the categories and the ballots, and the company airing the show is also competing in it. TheWrap's Loree Seitz says this year's format shake-up didn't help.

Where the show airs was never the problem. Clayton Davis, Variety's chief awards editor, wrote last month, when the talks first surfaced, "I don't think distribution was ever the dilemma awards shows were battling." He points to the SAG Awards. They were already shrinking on cable, and they drew about the same 1.8 million after Netflix took them over.

Amazon and NBC want different things from the night. NBC needs "a strong lead-in, a broad audience and plenty of advertising inventory," Davis wrote. Amazon wants "to serve Prime subscribers, keep viewers inside its ecosystem and stretch the ceremony into days of clips, interviews and social content."

The categories and the ballots are what's broken. Davis writes that the problems "live in the categories themselves, the ballots and, increasingly, the basic question of who even gets seen by the people voting." TheWrap reporter Loree Seitz asked after this year's show whether shaking up the telecast is a losing battle. She wrote that the changes alienated longtime viewers and "failed to draw a bigger audience." The Academy moved seven categories off the telecast to keep it under three hours. The audience still fell. The directors', writers' and actors' guilds said cutting them "devalues the contributions of the talented people the Academy is meant to honor."

Amazon airs the show and competes in it. Prime Video had 28 nominations under its own banner this year, plus 11 for Spider-Noir, a show it shares with MGM+. Prime Video shows won 10 Emmys. "Amazon has dogs in the TV awards fight," Davis wrote. He says the Academy has to make sure the platform airing the show "doesn't look like it's playing with home-field advantage." Reality Tea writer Ayusi Adhikari made the same point. She wrote that "Amazon also has a direct connection to the Emmy competition" and that the move "could also raise questions about fairness because Amazon competes for the same awards."

Where This Lands

The Academy says it traded four networks that took turns for one home that pays more and shows the Emmys free to the whole world. Amazon says it will make the show bigger and younger. Davis says the SAG Awards were already sliding before Netflix took them, and a new platform didn't reverse it. He says the categories and the ballots are the real problem. Seitz says this year's telecast changes didn't move the ratings. Davis also warned that the streamer airing the show would be one that just won 10 Emmys. The Los Angeles Times says the broadcasters had lost interest in promoting a show they saw as a commercial for their rivals. The first Prime Video Emmys will stream in September 2027.

Sources