This week, we recap details from the ongoing Sunday Ticket trial, including the news that the NFL rejected ESPN's proposed $70 price for the entire 2023 Sunday Ticket season, as well as single-team packages. Trial evidence also showed that Fox considered Sunday Ticket an "existential threat" to its business, asking the NFL in 2021 that Sunday Ticket not be allowed to grow more than 20% of subscriptions beyond its current level. We also discuss the contents of a second letter from House Representatives to Disney, Fox, and WBD about Venu Sports' business, deeming Venu Sports' response to their first inquiry "insufficient" on collusion, privacy, and pricing concerns. 

In addition, we highlight the acquisition by Private Equity firm Clearhaven Partners of IP video transport vendor Zixi and the acquisition by CTV-focused DSP Madhive of omnichannel marketing platform Frequence. Finally, we break down all the latest content licensing deals from Netflix, WBD, Showmax, INDYCAR, Rogers, Warner Bros. Discovery and the new advertising network from Google TV.

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This week, we discuss some of Netflix's latest data on its ad-supported business, including usage, monthly active users and the news that it will launch an ad tech platform to control its ad buying, placement, and targeting. We also cover news from YouTube's Brandcast, announcing that viewers watch more than 1 billion hours of content on TV screens daily. We discuss why FOX's CEO said 90% of viewing time on Tubi comes from VOD content, not their FAST channels and why I think FAST won't be profitable for all but the major content owners. We break out the nearly 2 million live linear TV losses in Q1 across pay TV and vMVPDs and how consumers continue to move from a deep linear channel lineup to specific live content. Finally, we discuss why Nielsen's new Media Distributor Gauge is flawed for viewership data when Nielsen compares companies like The Walt Disney Company to single streaming services like Prime Video. 

We also quickly recap earnings from Vizio, Brightcove, Akamai, WBD, and EchoStar, and highlight a new patent lawsuit filed against Google over caching and content delivery methods, dating back to Sandpiper Networks. 

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With all the recent sports streaming news, co-host Mark Donnigan and I did a special “Sports Streaming Podcast Episode” this week. We discuss the upcoming Venu Sports offering (Disney/WBD/FOX Sports JV) and the limitations we expect the service to face at launch. We weigh in on some of the tech behind the scenes and consider whether a 'beta' label could soften the blow for fans expecting a fully polished service from day one.

We also cover Netflix’s deal with the NFL, including its importance as the first global licensing deal with no blackout restrictions and how the agreement is structured. Finally, we highlight the NFL's 2024 fragmented distribution strategy across broadcast and streaming, which is great for the NFL's revenue but terrible for fans. (Correction: I said on the podcast the games will be on seven broadcast networks and platforms, but it's ten or eleven, depending on whether you separate ESPN from ABC and add in YouTube TV.)

Also briefly discussed are Roku's deal with MLB for Sunday morning baseball games, Sky Sports+ ' launch this August, and how, months later, Max's Bleacher Report (B/R) Sports Add package is still free for users.

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This week, we detail all the P&L numbers from the Q1 earnings across OTT platforms and streaming vendors. We highlight that while Disney+ and Hulu had an operating income of $47M, the rest of Disney's business didn't fare well, with linear TV operating income slumping 22% and linear network revenue across Disney’s portfolio falling 8% (excluding ESPN). We discuss why simply cutting costs isn't enough, and that Wall Street wants to see growth, which is why Disney's stock was down 10% after earnings. 

We detail Vimeo's Q1 earnings but, more importantly, debate what the future holds for the company. While Vimeo expects an operating loss of only about $3 million for the full year 2024, their projected revenue guidance means revenue would be down 8% to 4% year over year. We review all the infrastructure numbers from Fastly, Cloudflare and AWS, with Fastly breaking out revenue by service for the first time and lowering full-year guidance, sending its stock down 27%. We also detail how AWS's growth rate puts it on a $100 billion annual revenue run rate. Also interesting was Amazon's CEO saying that AI will drive "tens of billions of dollars" in revenue over the next several years.

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Fubo’s Co-Founder and CEO, David Gandler, sits down for an in-depth discussion about their lawsuit against Disney, FOX, and WBD, their Q1 earnings, industry challenges in content licensing, pricing, and bundling, and Fubo’s goal of reaching profitability in 2025. 

David defines antitrust, explains why Fubo believes the JV is anticompetitive and how the suit's outcome could impact the entire industry. We also highlight why so many carriage disputes are happening, leading to a fragmentation of sports content and an unfriendly fan experience. We discuss the pricing and bundling of vMVPD services, including how Fubo selects RSNs to partner with and why OTT service pricing never goes down.

Finally, David recaps Fubo’s most recent earnings, including its subscriber growth, lower net loss, recent debt reduction and Fubo's operating plan as it works towards profitability.

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This week, we recap all the Q1 subscriber and P&L numbers you need to know across Peacock, Paramount+ and Roku, breaking down profitability, losses, subscriber additions, ARPU and free cash flow. We cover the latest cord-cutting numbers from Verizon, Comcast and Charter, which lost 938,000 pay TV subs combined in the quarter. We also discuss some recent numbers from WBD about their expansion of Max in LATAM, Prime Video getting the National Monday Night NHL Games in Canada, and the latest RSN and sports news.

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This week, we did a mini-review of the NAB Show Streaming Summit and some topics we heard discussed around the difficulty in scaling streaming services for low latency and QoE. We also cover Netflix’s Q1 earnings and excellent user growth, adding 9.3 million subs, which was tempered by the news that they will stop reporting quarterly membership numbers and ARM a year from now. We highlight the latest rumors about Paramount Global, with reports that Sony Pictures Entertainment and Apollo Global are interested in the company, and detail the restrictions and complications for the companies if such a deal were to occur. 

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This week, we discuss the latest news around Disney, including their plans to crack down on password sharing in June in a "few" countries and markets, with a "full" rollout in September. We detail how complex ESPN’s DTC offering is becoming, with Disney announcing that its new ESPN streaming service will launch in the fall of 2025 and be offered as part of the Disney+ bundle, giving Disney three separate ESPN sports streaming services in the market. We also detail sports news from Formula One’s US-based owner, Liberty Media, announcing a takeover of MotoGP’s parent company and the "rumor" that Amazon might get the rights to take over the entire NHL Monday night package from Rogers in Canada, including playoffs, for the remaining two years of Rogers’ contract. Finally, we highlight the NBA teaming up with Roku to launch its first-ever FAST channel, Diamond Sports Group renewing its distribution deal with Charter Communications, and DAZN announcing an exclusive deal with the PGA TOUR across the Middle East, North Africa and Southeast Asia.

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Step up to the plate with us this week as we tackle the complex maze of baseball streaming. We cover the latest baseball streaming news, including Fubo adding RSNs and Hulu+ Live TV adding the MLB Network, and discuss the terrible fan experience, with some MLB teams requiring fans to access five different networks to stream games. We also highlight other sports news, including Peacock's exclusive streaming deal for the NFL’s first-ever regular-season game in Brazil and Amazon's sublicensing deal with Viaplay to broadcast 38 live Premier League games a season in Sweden and Denmark. We break down the launch of Hulu on Disney+ in the U.S. for Disney bundled subscribers, and why we think the report that YouTube TV will reach profitability in 2024 isn't accurate. Finally, we debunk the ridiculous report suggesting that because Bitmovin's live encoder is now deployed on Akamai, it "raises M&A eyebrows" about their acquisition.   

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This week, we detail WBD's planned international expansion of Max, which will make the OTT service available in 25 European countries and 65 countries and territories worldwide. We also highlight comments made by the NFL's Chief Business Officer regarding the newly announced WBD, FOX and Disney sports JV, which is missing over half of all NFL games. We discussed the latest rumors about a potential sale of Paramount Global, with Skydance still conducting due diligence and not yet having submitted a final offer. We detail the new YouTube TV multiview functionality on iPhones and iPads, and Peacock's upcoming enhanced four-view experience, called "Discovery Multiview," coming in time for the Olympic Games in Paris, which will be supported across smart TVs, streaming devices, web browsers and tablets. Finally, we discuss Kingsoft Cloud's Q4 CDN revenue, which decreased by nearly 10% from the previous quarter, and some changes coming to Comcast's internal CDN.

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