Amazon Prime Instant Video Beefs Up Sports And Documentary Content, Adds ESPN’s 30 For 30 Film Series

Amazon continues to ramp up the content in its Amazon Prime film catalog to draw users to the premium service, with the latest licensing acquisition expanding its back catalog of sports and documentary content. From today, users of Amazon Prime Instant Video, its on-demand streamed film service, can watch instalments of ESPN’s 30 for 30 popular series of sports documentaries including The U, Pony Excess and Winning Time, and Ice Cube’s Straight Outta L.A.

The ESPN content brings the total number of movies and TV episodes up to 22,000, all of which can be watched on Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet, the Roku player, iPad tablets, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles. It also brings Amazon Prime up to speed with arch competitor Netflix, which added a deal with ESPN to stream 30 for 30 films earlier this month.

The move is a mark of the service maturing with more emphasis on the long tail of content on the service, away from blockbusters. “We’re continuing to grow our Prime Instant Video library to provide our Amazon Prime Members with all the content they want – from feature films, to hit TV episodes to documentaries, and everything in between,” Brad Beale, director of digital video content acquisition for Amazon, said in a statement.

Other recent additions to Prime Instant Video have included TV shows from Warner Bros. and films and TV from MGM, and Paramount.

In all there are some 120,000 films and TV episodes on Amazon’s Instant Video service, which includes new release movies and day after TV shows, for customers to rent or purchase, download or stream. Amazon Prime membership is Amazon’s upsell for loyal users, giving them users an unlimited amount of streaming for a flat fee — in the U.S. costing $79 per year, with free two day shipping on various items, as well as instant streaming of films and TV shows.

H/T Brett Stubbs