Amazon Prime viewers hit with £1,000 TV licence fine warning

It's become one of the biggest and most popular streaming services in the UK thanks to smash hit shows like Clarkson's Farm and The Grand Tour and recently added a host of 007 content after acquiring the James Bond licence.

But Amazon Prime Video subscribers have been hit with a warning by TV Licensing that they could be slapped with a £1,000 fine for watching the streaming service depending on what kind of content they watch.

Recently, Amazon Prime has launched a series of live sports broadcasts, including coverage of the Champions League this season, like Arsenal's memorable 3-0 win over Real Madrid in the quarter-finals. Prime Video also has live tennis and UFC fights.

What's more, Amazon Prime Video now has an entire 'Live TV' section, which offers channels like Hell's Kitchen which, as you might expect, offers back to back episodes of Gordon Ramsay's cooking programme, as well as a Mr Bean Channel, CNN, Red Bull TV, EuroNews and all sorts of other hidden gems.

Unfortunately, TV licence rules make clear that you do in fact need a TV licence to watch any of this live content or these channels as they're being broadcast (i.e. not on catch up).

TV Licensing says: "If you're watching TV showing live on Amazon Prime, you need to be covered by a TV licence. You don't need a TV licence if you're only watching on demand programmes on Amazon Prime.

"You don't need a TV licence to watch on demand programmes on Disney Plus.

"If you are watching a TV programme live on YouTube, you need to be covered by a TV licence.

"A licence is not required to view user generated content, clips and videos on YouTube. This includes live streamed content that is not part of a television broadcast. Or being broadcast at the same time by other means."

TV Licensing goes on to warn: "You could be prosecuted if we find that you have been watching, recording or downloading programmes illegally. The maximum penalty is a £1,000 fine plus any legal costs and/or compensation you may be ordered to pay. The maximum fine is £2,000 in Guernsey.

"We have a database of approximately 31 million licensed and unlicensed addresses. This tells us if your address has a TV licence.

"All our visiting officers have access to this database. This means they can check if you have a licence or not.

"If you tell us that you do not need a TV licence, our officers may still visit you to confirm this.

"We also have a fleet of detector vans that can detect the use of TV receiving equipment at specifically targeted addresses within minutes."

A TV licence is a legal requirement if you do any of these:

• watch or record live TV on any channel via any TV service (such as Sky, Virgin, Freeview, Freesat)

• watch live content on streaming services (e.g. ITVX, Channel 4, YouTube, Amazon Prime Video, Now, Sky Go)

• use BBC iPlayer at all