Posts for 'Sports'

Not that long ago, regional sports networks (RSNs) were the beachfront property of the pay-TV industry. RSNs had exclusive rights to air local sports teams’ games in their markets and rabid fans willing to pay virtually any price to watch (especially if the local team was having a winning season). But the icing on the cake was that even non-fans were often paying for pricey RSNs, because their fees cleverly became inseparable from the most popular TV packages. In short, RSNs practically had a license to print money.

But few things last forever, and RSNs have become the latest example of the Internet’s disruption. Yesterday, the NY Post reported that AT&T’s auction of four of its RSNs, in Denver, Houston, Pittsburgh and Seattle, has drawn meager interest. AT&T was looking to sell the group for around $1 billion, but the bids have come in “around or below $500 million.” A big red flag was the four RSNs’ financial performance - an expected drop in earnings from $115 million in 2019 to just $55 million in 2020.

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I’m pleased to present the 485th edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

On this week’s podcast we discuss highlights of a recently released sports and news consumer survey conducted by consulting firm Altman Vilandrie & Company. Catching our attention was how well virtual pay-TV operators are doing with regular sports viewers. This reflects how much emphasis vMVPDs have put on adding sports networks to their packages (and also indicates why their prices are rising).

There was a lot of other interesting data related to sports and news consumption by age, type of sports, different services and more in the survey.

If you’d like to learn more about the full survey results, contact Matt Del Percio at Altman Vilandrie & Company.

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I’m pleased to present the 453rd edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

This past Sunday’s Super Bowl set the record for the lowest total score in the Big Game’s history, but it also set the highest record for number of people watching the action via the Internet. According to Colin’s excellent analysis, upward of 7 million people streamed some portion of the game. About 2.6 million did so via CBS and NFL digital properties. But per Colin’s calculations nearly twice as many watched via virtual pay-TV operators, which stream their services over the Internet. We both believe YouTube TV played a leading role.

So while the total TV audience watching shrunk to 98.2 million, its lowest level in over 10 years, the number of people who trusted the Internet to stream the action rose to a new high. We discuss the implications of this and the growing role virtual operators are playing now. We also observe how the Big Game’s advertising roster included SVOD providers and other digital-first companies, a sign of its ongoing superiority in reaching a mass audience.

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YouTube TV is back as this year’s World Series presenting sponsor and as with last year, Google’s skinny bundle is once again dominating. Watching the game last night (go Sox!) it was impossible to not be exposed to the brand and also some very creative elements of the “Watch like a fan” campaign.

YouTube TV renewed its World Series sponsorship for 2018 and 2019 with MLB back in March of this year. As with 2017, before the first pitch was thrown, there was a highly produced 90 second ad.  At first it looked like a promo for various Fox networks, though when the Google Home demo popped in it became clear it was for YouTube TV.

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I’m pleased to present the 435th edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Escalating programming costs for pay-TV operators are a chronic issue. In the age of cord-cutting and proliferation of SVOD, offsetting these costs with rate increases is no longer an option. One new solution being proposed by AT&T Communications’ CEO John Donovan is “engagement pricing,” whereby TV networks would be paid based on viewers’ actual consumption.

As Colin explains, it’s a break from industry norms, and even with AT&T leveraging Warner Media’s networks, it will be very difficult to persuade other networks to follow suit. Why get paid on viewership when you’re already getting paid regardless of how many people watched?

We then shift to CBS Sports’ decision this week to stream Super Bowl LIII to mobile devices without requiring a pay-TV subscription. It’s another nudge toward opening up sports to non-subscribers, though Colin and I agree the vast majority of marquee sports will remain locked behind pay-TV subscriptions.

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CBS Sports announced yesterday that it will extend unauthenticated streaming of Super Bowl LIII to mobile devices. The move means that viewers do not need to have a pay-TV subscription in order to watch the game on mobile, nor do they need to have wireless service with Verizon, as has been required in past years.

It also means that mobile streaming will be on the same footing as desktop and connected TV viewing, both of which had unauthenticated access the last time CBS had the Super Bowl rights, in 2016. The game will also be available to CBS All Access subscribers.

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I’m pleased to present the 425th edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

On this week’s podcast we cover a number of topics, starting with AT&T’s newest skinny bundle offering, WatchTV, which is bonus feature for subscribers to 2 of its new unlimited wireless plans. Colin and discuss the implications for the industry as AT&T reshapes consumers’ perceptions of pay-TV as a standalone premium service to a supporting feature in their wireless plan.

We then turn to the World Cup, which is setting streaming records, even in the early matches. Colin shares the data and his personal experiences on quality, which have been very positive.

Next, we touch on Apple’s latest high-profile content deals, with Oprah Winfrey and Sesame Workshop. Apple’s continuing to spend through the $1 billion it allocated, but we still wonder, how is this A-list content going to be distributed and monetized? Finally we review Instagram’s new long-form video service, IGTV, which was announced this week. We’re both excited about its prospects, particularly relative to Facebook’s other video initiatives, which have been all over the board.

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Discovery has signed a 12-year, $2 billion deal with the PGA Tour for global multi-platform live rights in 220 markets outside the U.S. for all PGA Tour properties. The deal provides access to 150 tournaments per year (2,000 live hours) including high-profile events such as The PLAYERS Championship, the FedExCup Playoffs and the Presidents Cup (though I believe it excludes other marquee events such as the U.S. Open, the Open Championship, the PGA Championship and the Ryder Cup which are outside the PGA Tour’s purview).

While Discovery will broadcast the tournaments on its various international cable and broadcast TV networks, the big potential upside in the deal is the new dedicated PGA Tour-branded OTT streaming service Discovery plans to build. The unnamed service, which will launch next year, will be another high-profile test of OTT’s ability to deliver direct-to-consumer benefits to super-fans as well as create incremental revenues.

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It’s NBA All-Star weekend and for the first time, the league is offering free access to live-streamed interviews of players to TV networks, social media and other publishers in over 180 countries around the world. Half the interviews will occur today at 11:05am PT with the other half at 11:50am PT. The NBA views these interviews as a way of generating visibility for players in their home countries and bringing fans closer to the action.

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I’m pleased to present the 406th edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

First up this week, Colin and I share our experiences live-streaming the Super Bowl. Both of us were on the road and were extremely impressed.  Except for latency of up to a minute or so, neither of us experienced any buffering or pixelation. In short, it was nearly a TV-like experience and really demonstrates how far live-streaming at scale has come.

We then shift gears to discuss strong growth at HBO Now, which just reported hitting the 5 million subscriber mark at end of 2017. HBO Now is benefiting from not being a “buy-through” on top of expensive pay-TV services. By going direct-to-subscriber, HBO Now has made its product much more accessible. We suspect that Amazon Channels and AT&T (which strongly promoted HBO Now in 2017), were pivotal to growth.

(Apologies, our audio quality isn’t that good this week).

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On Disney’s earnings call earlier this week, company CEO Bob Iger shared some details about ESPN’s new sports streaming service that will launch this spring and cost $4.99/month. Based on the initial reveal, it seems like a sports super-fan product that will give Disney some incremental revenue, but won’t be a game-changer in the broader pay-TV or online video worlds. It’s a refresh of the existing ESPN app powered by newly-acquired BAMTech technology.

Iger described 3 main features of the new ESPN app:

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As a Patriots fan, it was a bummer watching them go down in last night’s Super Bowl, but one major positive surprise was that streaming the game was a superb experience. I was on the road, and watched the entire game (except for the last minute) using the NBC Sports app on my iPad, on the public WiFi network in Palm Beach International airport in Florida where I arrived early for my flight which ended up delayed.

I could have watched on any number of TVs in restaurants or camped out on the floor like the fans below watching on TVs mounted in the terminal. But the circumstances created a good opportunity to see what it would really be like to be dependent on streaming.

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I’m pleased to present the 405th edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

This week we dig into Fox’s newly announced deal to broadcast NFL Thursday Night Football games for the next 5 years. The price was reportedly $3 billion, which translates to an average of $60 million per game, a 30% increase vs. what CBS and NBC paid last season.

Sports have long been thought of as TV’s firewall, but given the NFL’s own ratings declines, combined with accelerating changes in viewers’ behaviors, cord-cutting and adoption of ad-free SVOD, this deal carries risks for Fox. Can Fox turn a profit on the games as pay-TV operators push back on rate increases and advertisers balk at smaller audiences? Will we see a direct-to-consumer streaming service emerge? Time will tell.

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Also note, Colin has a new white paper out on content portability in the EU. Download it here.

Fox will have broadcast rights to NFL Thursday Night Football for the next 5 years in a deal that is reportedly worth over $3 billion. That would work out to an average of $60 million per game, up from the $45 million NBC and CBS paid per game over the past 2 years and up from the $37.5 million CBS alone paid in 2014 and 2015. The broadcasts will be presented by Bud Light.

The deal gives fresh credence to the idea that “live sports are TV’s firewall” against changing viewer behaviors and the rise of SVOD. The “firewall” concept has been around for years now and has driven the exorbitant rise in sports rights and the multi-billion dollar “sports tax” that pay-TV subscribers who are not sports fans pay each year.

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Adobe Primetime and The Diffusion Group have released new research, finding among other things, that the NFL is the most popular sport to live stream on digital devices. The research surveyed 2,000 U.S. consumers, revealing viewership trends for live sports viewers or “LSVs” - adult broadband users that watch televised live sports on any screen including PCs, TVs, smartphones or tablets.

The survey found that 37% of LSVs watch live sports on non-TV devices, with PCs used the most (cited by 27%), followed by smartphones (17%) and tablets (14%). Across all 3 of these devices, the NFL is the most popular of all sports. On PCs NFL is watched by 66% of LSVs, followed by Summer Olympics (59%) and NBA basketball (59%). On smartphones, NFL is watched by 70% of LSVs, then NBA (59%) and college basketball (52%). On tablets NFL is at 67%, followed by NBA (62%) and major league baseball (61%).

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Sports has been on the forefront of the streaming revolution from the start. Whether it’s early successes like the NCAA basketball tournament or the unprecedented scale of the 2016 Summer Olympics or more recently Thursday Night Football on Twitter and Amazon, sports have continued to push the boundaries of what’s possible with online and mobile delivery.

To better understand what’s happening with streaming sports and the best practices today, Akamai is presenting a free webinar on Thursday, October 19th at 1pm ET, which I will be hosting with Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia, my weekly podcast partner. Joining us will be Clark Pierce, SVP, TV Everywhere and Special Projects at Fox Digital Consumer Group and another executive TBD. Fox has been a leader in streaming sports, so Clark has a wealth of knowledge to share.

In the webinar we’ll also explore distinct new value propositions being created by streaming sports, key challenges and what’s ahead. We’ll draw on insights from Akamai’s recently published thought-leadership paper, Game On! How Streaming Sports is Heating Up, in which we interviewed executives at 8 companies leading the charge on streaming sports. Game On can be downloaded here.

For anyone involved in streaming sports, the webinar will be extremely valuable - register now!

I’m pleased to present the 390th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

First up this week, we discuss the impact of the “Star Trek: Discovery” launch on CBS All Access. CBS has said that All Access daily subscriber growth is up 200% over last year since the show’s launch. As Colin notes though, it’s hard to draw conclusions yet about how sustainable the additions will be or whether churn will spike. More originals are clearly needed to broaden the service’s appeal.

We then turn to the surprising news this week that YouTube TV will be the presenting sponsor of the 2017 World Series. Colin and I agree it’s really a sign of the times when a skinny bundle has stepped up this way. However, since Fox, the network broadcasting the games, isn’t even available yet on YouTube TV in half the top 50 U.S. markets, the sponsorship carries risks. Colin also notes that given YouTube TV’s programming costs, it is likely losing money for each new subscriber.

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Click here to listen to the podcast (24 minutes, 6 seconds)

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Sports has been on the forefront of the streaming revolution from the start. Whether it’s early successes like the NCAA basketball tournament or the unprecedented scale of the 2016 Summer Olympics or more recently Thursday Night Football on Twitter and Amazon, sports have continued to push the boundaries of what’s possible with online and mobile delivery.

To better understand what’s happening with streaming sports and the best practices today, Akamai is presenting a free webinar on Thursday, October 19th at 1pm ET, which I will be hosting with Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia, my weekly podcast partner. Joining us will be Clark Pierce, SVP, TV Everywhere and Special Projects at Fox Digital Consumer Group and Ben Weinberger, SVP and Chief Product Officer at Sling TV. Both Fox and Sling TV have been leaders in streaming sports, so Clark and Ben have a wealth of knowledge to share.

In the webinar we’ll also explore distinct new value propositions being created by streaming sports, key challenges and what’s ahead. We’ll draw on insights from Akamai’s recently published thought-leadership paper, Game On! How Streaming Sports is Heating Up, in which we interviewed executives at 8 companies leading the charge on streaming sports. Game On can be downloaded here.

For anyone involved in streaming sports, the webinar will be extremely valuable - register now!

Sports are where you’ll find a lot of the most innovative online video activity happening. In fact, sports have always been a leader in online video, with marque events like the NCAA basketball tournaments and Olympics driving some of the biggest live and on-demand audiences. For fans, online and mobile delivery have brought unprecedented access and immersion - watching sports has never been as much fun and convenient as it is these days.

To better understand the rapid innovation in streaming sports, what lies ahead and the key challenges that remain, my weekly podcasting partner Colin Dixon, of nScreenMedia, and I recently interviewed eight sports leaders for a thought-leadership report presented by Akamai. The report, “Game On! How Streaming Sports is Heating Up,” is available for complimentary download.

The executives we interviewed are from Sling TV, NBC Sports Digital/PlayMaker Media, Fox Sports, NeuLion, ETN Media/Street League, Tennis Channel, Whistle Sports and Akamai. Their companies participate in all facets of sports online - networks, rights-holders, technologists and service providers, leveraging various business models. The interviews provide invaluable insights into what’s working well today and what still must be improved for streaming sports to make further gains.

In addition to the report, we’re also planning a webinar to further explore the topic. Date is TBD, but coming soon.

Enjoy!

(Note: Akamai is a VideoNuze sponsor)

I’m pleased to present the 377th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

This week we start by discussing NBC Sports’ new “Premier League Pass,” which I wrote about a couple days ago. Colin and I agree that Premier League Pass is a clever way for NBC Sports to provide access to cord-cutters and cord-nevers. Going forward, we both like the idea of an “Olympics Pass” as well. Combined with AMC Premiere, which Comcast and AMC announced yesterday, it’s clear established media companies are innovating to offer more flexible access to viewers.

Colin then shares his reactions to an interesting presentation by Chris Ripley, President and CEO of Sinclair Broadcast Group, on the company’s ATSC 3.0 vision. I’ll admit this is not a topic I’ve followed too closely, but as Colin explains, Sinclair sees ATSC 3.0 as an entirely new delivery infrastructure it can use to deliver all kinds of services. Important to keep in mind, all of this is still very long-term.

(Note, the audio quality is a bit low this week with Colin being out of office when we recorded)

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