A $1 trillion market capitalization is as impressive as it is meaningless. Amazon hit that threshold on Tuesday, joining smartphone maker Apple and literally no other company. Market capitalizations, though, are a mathematical fiction. A far more substantial target would be to achieve a 13-digit top line. No other company has come close, but Amazon might. Jeff Bezos’s colossal online retailer made $208 billion of revenue in the past four accounting quarters. That’s still substantially behind Apple, at $255 billion. It’s also less than half the $510 billion reaped by supermarket chain Walmart and puts Amazon 16th among globally listed

Amazon has a surprisingly delicate touch for an $823 billion company. The U.S. e-commerce group made its first foray into UK soccer rights, but left local players Sky and BT with most of the games. That suggests Chief Executive Jeff Bezos cares as much about scoring tactical goals as tackling rivals head-on. Top clubs like Manchester United have been eagerly waiting for Amazon and other deep-pocketed tech groups to make a move on UK soccer rights. After a steep rise in the cost of rights at the last three-year auction in 2015, Sky and BT last year agreed to share

Amazon’s hefty shipping subsidy is Prime for growth. Chief Executive Jeff Bezos revealed on Wednesday that more than 100 million people are members of the e-commerce giant’s free shipping club. The annual fee of $99 in the United States would have to double for the company to break even on deliveries, Breakingviews calculates. But the investment helps keep the business motoring. Bezos dropped the Prime number in his annual letter to shareholders, which also quoted a handstand coach who preached the virtue of patience. It puts a figure on one of Amazon’s formidable loyalty-inducing tools for the first time since