VideoNuze Posts

Cord-cutting is accelerating. Deep-pocketed Big Tech (Amazon, Apple, Google) are scooping up marquee sports rights in an effort to add value to their services businesses. Linear TV viewing is collapsing. Consumers' attention is fragmenting as myriad social media and other activities beckon for eyeballs.

As Colin and I discuss on this week’s episode, ESPN finds itself at the center of this storm, as the venerable TV network gets squeezed from all sides. Adding urgency to the problem, and as we also explore this week, Sinclair's Diamond Sports Group, which owns Bally Sports, a big collection of Regional Sports Networks (RSNs) acquired from Disney as part of its Fox deal, is edging toward declaring bankruptcy.

While Diamond’s demise is closely tied to the debt it incurred by overpaying for the Fox RSNs in 2019, it raises more consequential questions about the health of the sports TV ecosystem - and therefore the value of sports broadcasting rights themselves. These rights have been funded primarily through the “sports tax” on pay-TV subscribers who are not sports fans (see “Not a Sports Fan, Then You’re Getting Sacked for At Least $2 Billion Per Year,” which I wrote back in February, 2011). Non-sports fans are getting soaked for far more than this in 2023, with huge - and mostly unknown - sums embedded in their monthly pay-TV bills (partly contributing to escalating cord-cutting).

Net, net, the delicate equilibrium in the sports TV ecosystem is under major pressure. With respect to ESPN, newly reinstated Disney CEO Bob Iger has a pressing - yet until recently unimaginable - question to address: long-term, is ESPN still a good business? And if it’s not, should Disney keep the network anyway, or seek to sell it off?

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Please save the date for VideoNuze’s third annual Connected TV Advertising PREVIEW: 2023 (virtual) on Tuesday afternoon, February 28th.
 
Connected TV is the hottest sector of the advertising industry, forecast by eMarketer to grow 27% in 2023 to $27 billion in the U.S. alone, despite significant economic headwinds.

VideoNuze’s Connected TV Advertising PREVIEW: 2023 (virtual) will feature senior industry executives sharing their thought leadership perspectives and insights on the year ahead for CTV advertising. PREVIEW is a one-of-a-kind virtual event, exclusively focused on CTV advertising.
 
The program will include a mix of cutting-edge research, keynote interviews, high-impact panel discussions and case studies (lots more news on the program and speakers soon). For attendees, CTV PREVIEW will be a must-attend afternoon of high-impact learning about what’s ahead for CTV in 2023.

Many thanks to our partners Beachfront, PadSquad, Roku and Wurl (with others to come).

If you’re interested in sponsorship information, please contact me.

Sign-up is complimentary!

In this week’s podcast, Colin and I do a deep dive interview with FuboTV’s CEO and Co-Founder David Gandler. FuboTV, which reported having 1.6 million subscribers at the end of Q3 ’22, has differentiated itself primarily with sports, which, as we discuss, has its advantages and disadvantages.

Specifically in the podcast, we dig into escalating and fragmenting sports rights, what impact tech giants like Apple, Amazon and YouTube will have as they stream more sports on their platforms, the role of FAST channels and regional sports networks (RSNs) for pay-TV providers, the decision to shutter FuboTV’s nascent sportsbook, how FuboTV is pursuing AI for cutting-edge user experiences and much more.

Listen to the podcast to learn more (42 minutes, 45 seconds)

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PadSquad, which specializes in creating high-impact advertising experiences, has partnered with CTV leader Innovid to gain in-house access to Innovid’s full suite of interactive CTV tools. The goal of the joint advanced CTV offering is to streamline and accelerate brands’ ability to create interactive and shoppable CTV ads.

According to PadSquad’s head of marketing Lance Wolder, it is the first time Innovid’s interactive CTV tools can be fully utilized by a third-party instead of through Innovid’s managed service. Lance said that with PadSquad’s team of over 20 designers and developers, being able to directly use Innovid’s tools will enable faster turnaround times for clients’ campaigns and also unlock new creative potential.

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In this week’s podcast, Colin and I discuss Warner Bros. Discovery’s plan to launch a new streaming bundle in France dubbed “Warner Pass,” exclusively on Amazon Prime Channels, which Variety reported. Warner Pass will include all HBO content, plus 12 WBD channels including CNN, Discovery Channel, Eurosport and others.

The move caught our attention because WBD has been quite vocal about its intention to launch a combined HBO Max / discovery+ service (expected to be simply called “Max”), which the Variety report noted it still plans to introduce in France in 2024.

Colin and I think Warner Pass could offer clues about how WBD will price the combined service eventually (especially in Europe). Yet it raises a concern that having two different streaming brands in France with similar content is clumsy and could cause consumer confusion (not to mention spending required to support two streaming brands).

Further, as we discussed in December, Warner Pass is yet another step in reversing the company’s strategy on third-party distribution. Prior WarnerMedia management decided to pull HBO from Amazon Prime Channels and others in September, 2021. As I wrote back then, in a direct-to-consumer world, not owning the subscriber, nor seeing their detailed viewing data, are real drawbacks.

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Happy new year and welcome to the first edition of Inside the Stream for 2023. Just after recording our Top 10 streaming stories of 2022 podcast a couple of weeks ago YouTube announced its deal with the NFL for Sunday Ticket.

In this week’s podcast we dig into how we think the economics of the deal might work. Colin modeled many of the variables, which I then tinkered with. The clear caveat is that no external person, including us, really knows all the pieces of the deal, nor the terms. So we’re taking our best guesses, based on how Sunday Ticket has performed for DirecTV and the new value we believe YouTube brings to the package.

Based on all of this Colin is skeptical about YouTube’s ability to turn a profit on Sunday Ticket, while I’m more optimistic. In addition I highlight a number of valuable strategic aspects of the deal to YouTube and Google, especially gaining direct experience with the NFL for the next 6-7 years. These insights will be extremely valuable as YouTube contemplates potentially bidding for some or all of the NFL broadcast package when it’s up for renewal in 2033.

Ultimately the value of Sunday Ticket to YouTube hinges on its ability to monetize the package much better than DirecTV did - more subscribers and more advertising revenue.

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Keeping with our end of year tradition, this week on Inside the Stream, Colin and I discuss the top 10 most important streaming video stories (in our humble view) of 2022.

Several of our top 10 stories focus on broader industry trends that are accelerating, such as cord-cutting and the rise of connected TV advertising. Others focus on changes at specific companies including YouTube, Netflix, Disney and WBD. And others involve emerging themes such as sports rights migrating to streamers, adoption of hybrid video-on-demand (HVOD) business models and the growth of FASTs. The top 10 highlight the industry’s vibrancy, as well as the challenges of navigating an ever-changing landscape.

Thank you for listening to Inside the Stream in 2022; hopefully you’ve found value in our discussions. We look forward to continuing the dialogue in 2023 and wish you all happy holidays!

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