Streaming Services vying for your attention

Without a doubt, streaming services is a game-changer for media consumption, as cord-cutting and cord-never households are expected to reach 51.7MM this year according to emarketer. As daily new coronavirus cases in the U.S. hit a new high, more and more production companies are rethinking their strategy of bringing their content directly to streaming services instead of theaters. But even without that, the major players are more active than ever refocusing on driving original content and more. 

Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash

Restructuring to focus on streaming. Disney, shuffled its organization this month to focus resources on its streaming business. 

• This includes an emphasis on developing and producing original content for its streaming services including Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ while its distribution and commercialization activities have been consolidated into one Media and Entertainment and Distribution group.
• With its popular Mandalorian series set to launch Season Two this week as well as new direct to streaming movies in the pipeline, the company thinks the magic is now right at the comfort of home. 

Strong growth in APAC. Netflix may have posted weaker than expected earnings as its subscriptions slowed down to 2.2MM new subscribers for the third quarter. 

• But, the APAC market is a big win with double-digit growth in both South Korea and Japan. 
• Despite slower subscriber growth, the company is estimated to surpass $17BN for its content budget.

Short as a ‘Quibi.’ Like its focus on short bite-sized content, Quibi’s lifespan ended up just as short. 

• The streaming service that grabbed headlines, multiple big-name investors, and big Hollywood names for its content, announced it would shut down its services last week.
• Citing the reasons for its failure as a result of the pandemic as well as an idea that wasn’t well-executed, the startup that raised almost $2BN in funding won’t be able to return much of it back to investors. 

fuboTV goes public. Launched in 2015, this subscription live streaming service differentiated by offering live sports streaming in addition to news and entertainment content. 

• The service went public at the beginning of October, raising $150MM with the listing, just two weeks after it reported double-digit revenue and subscriber growth YOY for the third quarter. 
• In March, the company merged with FaceBank Group, a virtual entertainment company that Disney also has stakes in. 

Music TV domination. VEVO, dominates the music video space with their content and is a joint venture amongst Universal Music, Sony Music, and Google’s parent company Alphabet.

• It launched a few partnerships in Europe this month. Aside from distribution to smart TV provider FOXXUM, it is also partnering with the Dutch interactive music platform XITE to launch on Apple TV. 
• Meanwhile, Apple announced it would launch Apple Music TV, a 24-hour music video livestream. 

TV alternative Philo is a silent competitor of fuboTV although it doesn’t carry popular sports programming.

• While it doesn’t carry content from the four major broadcast networks, the low-cost monthly subscription has kept this San Francisco startup in the competition. 

The bottom line. While streaming services may have seen great success in the past 10-15 years, the competition is getting ever more intense as different content providers are now fighting for the same cord-cutting/cord-never households.