Amazon Prime Video appoints Europe lead

Amazon Prime Video has promoted US-based Andrew Bennett to a freshly-created role in London, leading the US streamer’s European teams. 

Currently the vice president, head of global partnerships for Prime Video, MGM+ and Freevee, Bennett will take on the expanded role of vice president, Prime Video Europe and global business development, relocating from Seattle early next year.

His remit is to lead the Prime Video business in Europe, and the global third-party device business development and partnerships team globally.

He is to replace Barry Furlong (vice president of Prime Video Europe), who will move on from the company at the end of the year.

Supporting him in his new role is Sandhya Iyer who has been promoted to global head of distribution and partnerships for Prime Video, to lead business development, partner marketing, and the partner engineering team globally.

Iyer, who joined the company in 2014, will also oversee the strategic collaboration between Prime Video and 200+ leading consumer electronics manufacturers and cable operators.

At the start of the year, Prime Video restructured its European business in a bid to increase investment in emerging European locales. As part of the restructure it has rerouted original programming funding towards two priority regional groups ‘EU Established’, which includes the UK, Germany, Italy, France and Spain, and ‘EU Emerging’, which covers Benelux the Nordics and Central and Eastern Europe.

In an email to the Prime Video international team, vice president of Prime Video International Kelly Day said: “Andrew will bring his 12+ years Prime Video experience working across content acquisition, partnerships and business development, marketing, and product/tech, to his expanded role leading our Prime Video teams in Europe.

“I want to thank Barry for his efforts and leadership over the past four years where we have seen considerable growth for Prime Video across Europe. I appreciate that he will continue to support our teams in Europe through the end of the year and wish him every success in his future endeavours.”

Bennett’s direct reports will include director of EU established countries Brigitte Ricou-Bellan, director of EU emerging countries Ritchie Ordonez, director of marketing for Europe Marie Thomas, director of channels for Europe) Julian Monaghan, director of TVoD for Europe Stephan Bauer, head of EU programming strategy Chandru Lakshminarayanan and global head of distribution and partnerships Sandhya Iyer.

He joined Amazon in 2012 to execute SVoD deals and lead the TVoD content acquisition team, and has since led multiple content acquisition teams to expand relationships with partners and negotiate new partnerships. He spearheaded the launch of Prime Video Channels in 2015, has led global distribution, and helped drive the performance of Amazon’s three streaming services Prime Video, MGM+, Freevee.

He began his career in TV production for HBO and the NBA, where he won four Emmys as a segment producer.

A version of this story first appeared on Screen’s sister site, Broadcast