Episode 81: Latest ARPU and Sports Viewership Numbers, Fubo Price Increase, Super Bowl Will Stream in 1080P60 HDR

Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome to this week's edition of the Dan Rayburn podcast, the show that curates the streaming media industry news that matters most, unvarnished, unscripted and providing you with the factual data you need to know, without any of the hype, the pulse of the streaming media industry.

Speaker 2: 0:20

Welcome to the Dan Rayburn podcast. I am Dan Rayburn, along with co-host Mark Donaghan at the end of the week here, friday January 12th. Welcome to listeners. I apologize in advance. My voice is going to be a little rough. To say that, mark, that I'm a little tired, would be an understatement. The amount of news this week has been just completely overwhelming. Yesterday, I think yesterday, I did 14 hours, never left the house in terms of blogging, posting, reading news, pushing on LinkedIn. I was telling Mark just in the last seven days, over 300,000 impressions just on LinkedIn alone. No stuff I've been pushing up because so many stats and numbers have come out in the last week. Not surprising.

Speaker 2: 1:06

The first week of January was a little quiet people still away but it is busy. Mark and I were recording this the day before the NFL wild card exclusive game on Peacock. Yes, naturally, mark, I'll be blogging all about that in real time, so we'll cover that on the next podcast. For this one, we're going to wing this a little bit, not go off any notes or whatnot. Let's just roll through my feed in LinkedIn and some of the other news that we've seen out there. We've got some numbers. We've got some new numbers regarding subscribers from Netflix, crunchyroll, some others here.

Speaker 2: 1:47

Mark, let's start with just this was pretty interesting. Yes, network and MSG Networks have launched a joint venture that they're calling Game. It's an abbreviation stands for Gotham, advanced Media Entertainment. Okay, kind of cool. The idea here is yes, network and MSG Networks are going to help other teams and leagues launch their own streaming services. So it's a 50-50 joint venture. What they're saying is between the two companies, the experience they have in the video streaming tech stack, and players and applications. They're going to somehow work with other teams or leagues.

Speaker 2: 2:34

I don't know how they're doing that exactly. For me, is this licensing? Is it managed services? But pretty interesting and it's good for the industry, because the vast majority of the S Network and MSG Network tech is not in-house, it's coming from third parties, whether it's transcoding, whether it's CDN. You can see multiple press releases that both of those companies have done with technology companies in the space. But pretty interesting. They didn't announce in the press release any actual customers as of yet who they might be working with. But, mark, when I posted this, I thought, okay, this is kind of interesting, but there's no actual information really for us to look at. We don't know who they're selling to or what exactly it's going to be, how they're going to package it, and yet it has 23,495 impressions on LinkedIn in five days.

Speaker 3: 3:40

So my take on this and I have no insight into who the vendors are that are being brought along or anything. So I'm just as curious as you and probably everyone. But I can understand why they're doing this. On one level, you might say well, why is this needed? Like, there's video if a team or a league wants to go direct, build a D2C, it's not say it's easy, but there's well-known solutions out there. That's very clear. But it turns out that teams and leagues they're in the business of sports, right, they're in the business of entertainment, they're not in the business of video and technology. And it's a different language and it's a different. And there is a role for these intermediaries, for someone who can speak the language of the league, the team, and someone who can coordinate if they're not building it themselves in this case it certainly appears they're not can coordinate with the tech vendors and can be that one-stop shop, make it easy.

Speaker 3: 4:52

Yeah, I think of it as managed services. It's managed services and I'm not deep, deep, deep in sports tech. There's other folks in the industry who work much, understand this, work every day, literally with teams and leagues. But over the last year, year and a half, I've had more exposure and as I get exposure, I realize that selling to teams is not so easy on one level, and it's hard, and they have unique requirements and they don't understand the tech, and so what I'm saying, netnet, is that this actually completely makes sense to me. Now, the only question I have when I read this is is this sort of a stop gap? There's just this immediate need, and when you look at MSG and you look at, yes, they have relationships with sports, with teams, team owners, et cetera, is it that some of those people just came and said help us, help us please.

Speaker 2: 5:51

Well, I think it's the diamond stuff.

Speaker 3: 5:52

They came together.

Speaker 2: 5:53

It's the implosion of the RSN Right, it's got to be the diamond bankruptcy yeah exactly the implosion of RSNs.

Speaker 3: 5:58

So my only real question is is this going to turn into kind of the new model for how sports gets monetized with video, where the RSNs sort of they've gotten a little bit. The shape of the RSN is changing, I guess, is what I'm saying? No, doubt. So I don't know None of that. It's all conjecture and we'll just see. But what I'm saying is this makes sense now I'm not. That's not a statement of whether this is going to be successful or this is the new model.

Speaker 2: 6:31

Yeah, I don't know if it's the new model considering. Yes, network and MSG networks are obviously very unique.

Speaker 3: 6:36

They control a bunch of teams. Yeah, that's right, yeah.

Speaker 2: 6:40

All right, they also, in the press release they talked a lot about how they wanted to share with others just the analytical information that they have and what they've collected. Of course, they didn't say what it was so interesting to watch. But, mark, side note to this is you talk about sports leagues. Many of them are teams not having so much exposure to the tech and whatnot. And then we have someone like Major League Soccer who I didn't even get the post list to LinkedIn yet, but they announced yesterday the launch of what they're calling MLS Innovation Lab.

Speaker 1: 7:08

Wow.

Speaker 2: 7:09

So it's a program designed to shape the future of their sport through identifying what they say are cutting edge startups and advanced technologies, and this ties into athletes fan experience, the clubs Really interesting if you think about, obviously, the 10-year deal they have with Apple. So what I like is they actually outline not just hey, we're looking at cool tech, but here's what we're actually looking at, which I thought was pretty interesting.

Speaker 3: 7:39

Interesting.

Speaker 2: 7:40

So they also kicked this off in December at MLS Next Fest in Arizona, where six companies sort of tested and showcased their products and capabilities in a live setting. So you have a couple pieces of technology here, some not tied to streaming, some are tied to training systems for athletes. One of them, though, is a platform that instantly translates content into any language while it says, maintaining the native speaker's voice and tone. Interesting. Another was gamified mixed reality. They didn't really say too much of what it was doing here, tracking GPS related. That's kind of interesting. The one that you'll find interesting and listeners is a 5G enabled camera with an OTT platform that delivers live broadcasts and highlights and advanced what they're calling advanced game player analytics in the US. So I love the fact that you know.

Speaker 2: 8:45

Here's MLS saying, hey, let's look at this tech, let's help some of these companies. So I reached out to the person running this mark and said hey, you got to come to the NAB show streaming some in April and Vegas and come talk about this, let's see if they do. But I'd love to sit with them, down with them, for 30 minutes and just say you know what's really driving this, because, to your point, you don't usually think of sports leagues as being super tech heavy, and I think the NFL's a great example. The NFL relies on almost every other company out there besides themselves for technology. That's right. They just don't have a lot of technology in house, and that's okay. That's not a knock on them. But here's MLS doing an innovation lab, so pretty cool.

Speaker 3: 9:32

Yeah, interesting.

Speaker 2: 9:34

Let's jump into some news that we talked about last week, about this whole Sony merger with ZEE. We were basically saying it's potentially in jeopardy. It was being reported that. Well, now Bloomberg is reported that Sony is officially calling off the $10 billion merger and that they're going to send a termination notice by January 20th.

Speaker 2: 9:56

So got to watch that in terms of what the impact is to ICC. Other news is the New York Post was the one that reported that Midgley baseball rejected a roughly they're saying $150 million investment by Amazon to Diamond Sports, and apparently we don't have confirmation here, but it does make sense. It's being reported that MLB wants to strike its own streaming deals with Amazon or Apple directly as opposed to being on the outside. There was a bankruptcy hearing slated for Wednesday, january 10th, but that got postponed. Some are suggesting it got postponed because they think maybe now the two sides have come to a deal. That's what some were suggesting, but we don't have any evidence of that two days later. I'd say real quickly, we can cover this one, mark, as I did post a, as you saw, a pretty detailed post with an update on ARPU for calendar, three of 2023 with a chart.

Speaker 2: 11:08

It took me a long time. I went through somebody's SEC filings and whatnot and I posted the chart. Let's see one, two, three, four, five, six, so 10 different streaming services. But in addition to that I looked at about another 20. So it was about 30 services.

Speaker 2: 11:25

I looked at not just in the US but outside the US as well, so you can check that out on my blog, streamed at your blogcom slash ARPU. I made it real easy to find. But the key takeaway here is that it was much easier to track ARPU years ago because business models were pretty straightforward for a lot of the companies they were SFOT only. But now that you have AVOD models, you have wholesale deals, you have bundled pricing deals. It's pretty hard to compare ARPU year over year over year, especially with all the price increases over the last, say, call it 18 months. There's been a lot of price increases.

Speaker 2: 12:15

And then also I was calling out FUBO because in all the numbers FUBO is actually the only one that breaks out ARPU based on subscription and then a separate number of how much they get from an advertising standpoint out of the total subscription number. We haven't seen anybody else do that as of yet. So on my blog I break that out Netflix, hulu, warner Bros, discovery, dtc, fubo, roku, disney, espn, paramount Plus, peacock and Vizio. I also in the comments gave out two or three from China. But all the rest, like Sling TV, acorn, prime Video, apple TV, dizone, epic, motortrend, brick Box, pluto TV, you pick it we don't have any information from them at all. A few of them. Mark did give out some information two, three years ago on ARPU, but at this point it's too old to really use it.

Speaker 3: 13:11

Yeah, yeah. This is definitely really encouraged the listeners to take a look at this. A whole lot of interesting things pop out, but one of the things is how many times, dan, do we read the future is fast. It's where all the revenue is going. It's everybody and you look on here and these are all pay. There is a mix of some advertising supported, but for the most part, these are subscription services and the highest ARPUs are all ones you pay for.

Speaker 3: 13:49

That is true, I mean there's no, so I continue to it. Just it bugs me this whole narrative that all video is going too fast, everything is going to be. It's free, ad supported. It's the evidence. It's just not true when you look at Well, especially sports.

Speaker 2: 14:10

I mean economics, especially sports. Yeah, I mean we, just ESPN. It was reported they're in the midst of negotiations to maintain the sole rights for college football playoffs and sources are saying ESPN is considering paying approximately $1.3 billion for the rights for a new six-year deal.

Speaker 2: 14:31

So there you go just more viewership, pay TV-wise, and then rolling mark into NBC something that's football. So NBC Sports put out an end of year press release talking about all these different stats and let's run through these for a minute. So let me get this right. There's a lot of numbers in here. So Sunday Night Football in 2023 delivered a full season across all the games AMA average minute audience of above 1.5 million viewers, or 1.56 million Now. That's across Peacock, nbc Sports website, nbc Sports app and NFL digital properties. That's up 33%, they say, from the prior record. The total audience across pay TV and all digital properties combined was 21.4 million viewers. So, based on those numbers, which I love, nbc Sports puts out, breaks them out, because Fox and Disney do not. For ESPN, this means that digital made up 7% of total viewers, 7%, which I'm not saying that's bad or good, it's just that's the number. Right, listeners can determine what they think of that, but that's the number. That's facts. Three games topped the 2 million mark, which they say had never previously been reached by a regular season NBC Sports simulstream. So interesting numbers there. We've gotten a lot of numbers this week and then let's go to. Let's go because we're talking football here let's go to the Super Bowl.

Speaker 2: 16:15

Cbs Sports announced it will deliver to Super Bowl in 4K. However, let's make sure we get this accurate here. I can confirm that the way you will get Super Bowl streaming this year is through Paramount Plus or the CBS Sports app, but you will have to authenticate. It will be TVE TV everywhere, so in other words, the Super Bowl will not be free. When you authenticate, you'll be pointed to a local affiliate. I've also confirmed Paramount Plus will still have the free trial available to sign up the day of the game, so you can sign up and do a trial. The national stream will be available at 1080p60 HDR, not 4K. Paramount Plus will not stream in 4K. The CBS Sports app will not stream in 4K. I see a lot of people online saying it's going to be in 4K.

Speaker 2: 17:15

It will not be in 4K. Okay, paramount confirmed this. What is going to be 4K is the stream will be upconverted 4K stream and will only be picked up by distribution partners like YouTube TV. I don't have a list of all the distribution partners picking it up. I know for sure YouTube is. I would assume Fubo is. I've been asked if Hulu Plus Live TV will pick it up. I do not know for sure, but I've never seen any live content on Hulu and 4K. I've only seen on-demand content in 4K and Hulu. But that's what we know so far about the playoffs, oh, sorry, about the Super Bowl. I'm getting so confused between all these games that I have to.

Speaker 2: 18:10

Someone just texted me, Mark, because I just put up a blog post saying watch for my blog tomorrow on the Peacock exclusive NFL wildcard game, and they're explaining to me no, it's wildcard, I mean, the only one of the team moves on. I was like, okay, I better correct that then. I thought they were both already in, but no, they're in the playoffs.

Speaker 3: 18:31

Yeah, it's wild.

Speaker 2: 18:32

Man. So, Wildcard, exactly.

Speaker 3: 18:36

So you know what would be really interesting, dan, and if anybody can get somebody to talk, even if you have to obfuscate details, it's up to you. But I would be super curious to know, on this whole 1080p 60 of the Super Bowl, not 4K if there was not some very serious analysis done to basically demonstrate that, with the quality of a lot of the scaling inside TVs, if you have a very high quality 1080p HDR picture, that it scales it to 4K and that, though it's not native, that's 100% correct. Nobody's saying it's it's real 4K, but that to the consumer the quality is so good and when you think about the bit rate that you can deliver that at compared to what it takes to do very good you HD. I would be really curious to know if, if that's why this is 1080p 60 or if there's some other technical limitation. Maybe you can find that out.

Speaker 2: 19:46

Because, yeah, you know, when we talk about that or I should say, when I talk about that one-on-one with a lot of the OTT services and the broadcasters, as you well know, mark, there's always a trade-off of cost versus quality. Yes, what are the? Whether that's the video quality, whether it's low latency, ultra low latency, there's whole idea that you should cram more bits through. For the hell of it. How many viewers can actually notice?

Speaker 2: 20:15

Now the other thing, mark we never get what percentage of all the viewers that are streaming content are even watching it on a screen capable of seeing the difference?

Speaker 2: 20:29

It's not 100% Older TVs if you're watching on an iPad, if you're watching on a Mac, that's not even supporting for it. So I think some of it is a technical limitation, but also part of it is, as you know, depending on where the feed is coming from. Cbs, fox, nbc, they all broadcast the original source and different quality as well. It's complex, no doubt, but I think if you're watching any of these games on broadcast TV or on streaming, the quality isn't what you're complaining about, traditionally and by quality, mark, I'm saying the picture itself. What you're complaining about is it's stuttering. What you're complaining about is like we saw recently with the Peacock game in December with some HDR issues. Those are things outside of what is the max bit rate, and what I'm really interested to see is when live event flash traffic comes to a site for sign up, we see issues with authentication, not with the delivery of the video, so I'm interested to see how that works with Peacock tomorrow.

Speaker 3: 21:45

Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2: 21:49

But that's the part that I think that is most important.

Speaker 3: 21:51

Well, and that's the whole point of even asking the question, and it'd be really curious to know, because you know and look, I care about video encoding and I care about all this stuff and we all do right, but it is a fact, there's just no way to dispute it that a very well-encoded 1080p60 with HDR at maybe a slightly higher than quote normal bit rate because you really want to pack quality in there, but the scaler in a lot of these TVs is really good, it really is. And when you look at the picture you say that just looks good and I can deliver that at nine or 10 megabits versus a compromised UHD at 15 to 17 megabits. And so then you say I'm more than 50% more bits to go to UHD. Here I can claim it's native, but at the end of the day the experience is not better and in some cases might actually be worse, because to really get that good UHD you're going to need more, like 20 or 22 megabits, you know.

Speaker 2: 23:05

So yeah, I wonder what you would actually need to, because we see so much.

Speaker 3: 23:08

Oh, there's so there's so much and don't pay any attention to these vendors, especially the encoding guys that are showing, you know we can deliver fabulous, you know, uhd at eight megabits. And then you look at the files they're streaming and you're like, well, yeah, it's like there's zero complexity, you know, in the files. So sports is very different. Anyway, if you get a chance to, you know, to get an off the record, you know, and get some intelligence there, I think it'd be super interesting because it also would put to bed, you know, all again these slightly insane arguments that you know the industry has to stream 4K and I know you've written a lot about this too. You know have to. Are there going to be irrelevant?

Speaker 2: 23:53

Well, yeah, and note where we get most of that writing from From vendors, yeah, but also just from members of the media who don't understand the business. We don't we don't get traditionally a lot of that from viewers.

Speaker 3: 24:09

Yeah, it's true.

Speaker 2: 24:10

Let's jump into some layoff news.

Speaker 3: 24:12

Mark, it's been quite a week for layoff news. A sad week, yeah.

Speaker 2: 24:17

So, not surprising. We covered the video amp news last week, and now we've got Prime Video MGM Studios. We've also got Twitch. We've got Discord. Who else did we have this week? Oh, we've got Google from their devices, and services team.

Speaker 2: 24:43

So, hi, we'll go through some of these numbers. But the thing here for listeners to understand and we talked about this leading up in Q4 of last year, coming into the New Year's, every company is resetting the bar. In CapEx and OpEx, companies had a financial and business plan to work through to get themselves to a revenue number by the end of last year, but note that they've now all wrapped up Q4 and full-year financials. If it's calendar year, they know what they did or did not make as far as the numbers. So for those that are looking to the numbers and saying we have to do a better job, the first thing we've got to do is make more cuts in January. They're in the thick of 2024 planning. So if the revenue and efficiencies and cost savings they thought would come by the end of last year they didn't come through, as they look at full-year financials, they're deciding to let people go now, immediately to set themselves up for 2024. That said, mark, I think what these CEOs are saying as a whole I think is ridiculous. I think it's frankly. I think a lot of them are just giving really coward statements Because to say, you know, we grew quickly and expanded our workforce faster than we should have. We became quote less efficient in how we operated. You did all this in 2022. So why are you only just now making adjustments in January of 2024?

Speaker 2: 26:15

And then some of these companies Mark this is their third round of layoffs in 18 months. So why did you cut 5% and then you cut 10% and now you're cutting another 10 or 15%. If you end up having to cut 30 or 35% or 18 months, something's not right and you should have cut quick and deep the first time. It's almost like they postponed and pushed out the issues they were having expecting what, in two quarters, they were going to be resolved. So that's one thing I think companies have done a really poor job of overall is why are you doing multiple rounds of cuts? Your numbers don't change that drastically over a two-quarter period.

Speaker 2: 27:01

So Discord is laying off 17% of staff, which is about 170 employees. Google is a couple hundred. They set a few hundred roles across devices and services. The majority of that is in the augmented reality hardware team. Google did say, though, other parts of the company were also affected. They didn't say what, so we don't know full details on there.

Speaker 2: 27:30

Twitch man, these guys. So Twitch has now laid off more than a thousand employees over the past 12 months. One-third of their staff. They're now cutting. And what did the CEO say? He's saying that they were building for where they thought the business would be in three years or more, not where we're at today. Really Like, how are you still CEO? They should be held accountable for that.

Speaker 2: 28:01

Now some CEOs have been pushed out as a result. I frankly don't think enough of them. And then the Amazon one. So Amazon announced they would lay off several hundred employees. We haven't gotten an exact number. I'm seeing 400 to 500 reported, but Amazon hasn't confirmed that the cuts are coming from their studio operations Prime Video, amazon MGM Studios in Americas. And what they have said is, quote we've identified opportunities to reduce the number of employees, to reduce or discontinue investments in certain areas, while increasing our investment and focus on content and product initiatives that deliver the most impact. End quote. Now I find interesting nowhere in the letter that they sent out internally to employees did they mention trying to get profitability, whereas every other company, naturally-.

Speaker 2: 28:50

Now they mentioned that Call it out Is saying that and, mark, I'll have you talk on that one in a minute. But then the final one with Amazon is in addition to that, audible, which is owned by Amazon, laid off 5% of their employees this week, which is just over a hundred staffers. Now. Audible CEO said they need to get quote leaner and more efficient and then said in the letter internally that they had quote a strong year. That's what you're telling your employees. You had a strong year, yeah.

Speaker 3: 29:22

How do?

Speaker 2: 29:23

you feel, if you're one of?

Speaker 3: 29:23

the hundred, you know, and it's like wait a second, we've got to get leaner. We had a strong year and you're letting me go Right.

Speaker 2: 29:31

And, by the way, notice you didn't say you had a profitable year. Again, you didn't say profitable. The CEO also went on to say quote delay offs will help position us for continued success in the coming year and into the future, given the increasingly challenging landscape we face. Weren't you facing a challenging landscape every year for the last since you started your business? Is there any year where it's not challenging?

Speaker 3: 29:57

Absolutely, that's true.

Speaker 2: 29:59

So it's such an odd statement to tell employees you had a strong year and a strong business and you say that you're having success and you're going to continue it. But, by the way, we still need to lay 5% of you off. So I don't think there's anything wrong with every company with every company out there doing the layoffs every year, right, depending on the size of the company. You should be laying off between 1% to 5% of your employees every year, just based on how well, they're doing their job.

Speaker 3: 30:32

Famously, jack Welch, who considered by many one of the greatest CEOs of whatever from the last 30, 40 years, or whatever General Electric, he had that philosophy, that's it, and he was. You know, there were obviously people who thought it was just so terrible and but they called it. You know top grading is what they called it, but there was a real it it's. I remember hearing him talk on it and this really stuck out to me. What it, what a comment that he made around it and he said you know, you're not doing the employee or the company of service by keeping somebody in a position that that they are maybe just barely surviving in. So you know, too many companies even just justify well, you know, maybe we'll give them a little more time. Well, maybe we can move them over here, and both are losing. You're not doing anybody a favor. That person's going to succeed somewhere else, you know. So set them up for that.

Speaker 3: 31:38

And yet I just think too, in the past anyway, you know, people just got used to and you didn't see it a lot. You know top grading was like oh, you know, that's, that's old school, that's. You know, that's brutal, that's mean. You know, in reality it's how business should work in my mind and at the same time, it's you're. You're helping people go where they can thrive and if they're not thriving in your environment, I mean I know there's exceptions. I'm sure there's people out there who you know maybe struggle for whatever reason and maybe they can't thrive in a lot of environments. But I truly believe it for 99.5% of those around us that just because they're struggling in one company doesn't mean they won't go somewhere else and absolutely be a rock star. But companies held on too long in a lot of cases, oh great.

Speaker 2: 32:33

Well, this is business. You have to separate emotions from business. You have to companies repivot, they refocus, they realize a product's not working in the market, they can't raise money to a certain rate. They need to be successful. They merge with another company. Layoffs are going to happen. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think the key thing here, though, mark, in everything we do in life, is about setting proper expectations with others.

Speaker 2: 32:56

Right, that's the thing that bothers me yeah Right, with these notes that they're sending out to employees is everything's great internally. We had such a good year, it's so strong and we got to let you guys go.

Speaker 1: 33:08

We got a lot to go, yeah, so sorry.

Speaker 2: 33:10

Why don't you just come out and say listen, last year, unfortunately, we lost $200 million. At the current rate, we continue that we'll be out of business in three years. So we're going to have to make the hard decision to refocus our business, to cut back on costs, and that includes cutting back on people. There's nothing wrong with doing that, but give these people your laying off the actual facts of why you're doing it, instead of this high level generic nonsense of we were too fast. We already know that.

Speaker 3: 33:39

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 33:40

Now, mark, you brought up a link regarding the Amazon layoffs and you were saying someone or the post was saying that somebody leaked some audio from that but I'll let you talk to that for a minute. But it just reinforces the fact that even Amazon internally it was like I think we're growing too fast.

Speaker 3: 33:56

Yeah, yeah, I think it was up on Business Insider but caught it. It was in front of Amazon Prime Video. I believe the audio was from last I don't know December maybe, and maybe it was a town hall. I'm not sure the exact context, maybe it doesn't say, but the comments from the president and CEO of actually I guess it was the head of Prime Video. I need to go look at the post.

Speaker 3: 34:30

Anyway, the comments were really pretty clear. He was trying to say in as candid and direct away like look, we are way ahead of our plan in hiring. We maybe need to get more efficient and ask ourselves if we can get it done without adding headcount. I think it's just, I don't know. I want to believe I tend to take an optimistic view. I really truly don't believe that most companies are just so checked out or out of it or some might even say stupid or dumb that they just decided we don't care, we're just going to go out and start hiring people. Hire, hire, hire. I even wonder if some of it is just corporate inertia, when the budgets are more easily approved and when there's just certain indicators in the business, if almost I don't want to say it's automatic or de facto, but that's what it looked like. We went through a period of call it, two years, maybe almost a two and a half year period, where it was just higher, higher, higher, and it was like a snowball and it was just faster, hiring, more, hiring, it just continued.

Speaker 3: 35:52

Again, this is not absolving any, especially at the highest levels of the organization. It's not absolving them of any responsibility. I'm trying to make the point that, as much as it's easy to be armchair and look and almost give commentary of, these companies are all stupid. What were they thinking? Reality, they're not stupid. Yeah, they weren't thinking, maybe, but the inertia kicked in. I was just reading between the lines when I read this Amazon Prime video leaked audio or blog post and it just felt like that was the theme. Now, I have no idea. I wasn't there, I didn't hear the, so I have no idea. But I just found it interesting because across the board, it is absolutely true, it does not matter who the company is. They are cutting back right now, just across the board. It's not unique to only our industry. It's happening everywhere.

Speaker 2: 36:56

I definitely agree more. It's all about how you message. And let's jump into some more numbers here. Espn broke out its TV viewership across their falsely to college football games this season, but of course, espn didn't include any streaming stats, which they never do. The only thing they said was the Capital One Orange Bowl game was quote the most streamed college football game ever on ESPN plus. No idea what that means. However, if we look at TV viewership, the low was 3.8 million for the Duke's Bowl and the high was 6.8 million for the Cheez-Itz Bowl. I didn't realize. Cheez-itz had their own bowl. Cheez-itz, let's see Citrus Bowl. So 3.8 million to 6.8 million. Put some numbers there. In terms of pay TV viewership.

Speaker 2: 37:47

Let's jump into Netflix. We have a new number from Netflix, so important we get this right. Netflix announced they now have 23 million global monthly active users. It is not subscribers. I've seen multiple headlines saying 23 million subscribers. It's not monthly active users. Also, mark, quick shout out to somebody Look, we are all responsible for getting numbers right, including myself. I appreciate. Someone reached out right after I posted this on LinkedIn and said you reverse the numbers. It's not 32 million, it's 23 million. So I was able to correct it within a minute of posting. Probably nobody noticed, but appreciate them reaching out. I have a responsibility as well to get those numbers right. So it's 23 million global monthly active users for their advertising sported plan. Now Netflix also gave an interesting stat here, mark. They said of Netflix customers on Avon plans, 85% are streaming on the platform for more than two hours per day.

Speaker 3: 38:47

Yeah, I found that really interesting.

Speaker 2: 38:50

It's very interesting. More than two hours per day, so more than 60 hours a month. Now note that they say users, they don't say subscribers, and I'm not sure what Netflix's definition of a user is. I'm not really sure what that means you know what?

Speaker 3: 39:11

That's actually fascinating because, depending on well, wait a second the tier, the lowest tier, you can only have one simultaneous stream, Correct, Okay? So yeah, I was just thinking like, is it because?

Speaker 1: 39:28

Single stream plan.

Speaker 3: 39:29

And because you have multiple potential viewers on a single. So then in reality, if you had 23 million households, you could have, if you were double that, 46 million actual viewers. That's what I'm thinking.

Speaker 2: 39:44

I'm thinking they're averaging how many people are watching per house. Right, that's exactly what I'm thinking as well. The other thing I'm wondering is even though it's a single stream, I can still share that with someone else as long as I'm not watching at the same time, so are they seeing some of that as well?

Speaker 3: 40:01

They clearly can track IPs. I mean, you know they've known, so they clearly know when that's happening.

Speaker 2: 40:10

Fascinating. The other thing is the 85% number.

Speaker 3: 40:13

That's right.

Speaker 2: 40:15

So are they isolating active users on a day-by-day basis this is something that someone left a comment on or rather, all active users across a month and averaging across. So if you have 23 million and 5 million, don't watch anything that month. Is there a minimum viewing threshold which could skew the numbers? Don't know, but interesting, interesting, they put out the number the way they did. We know that at some point is guaranteed as the number gets bigger. They're going to have to break this out in more detail to Wall Street. Wall Street is watching it too closely, but interesting numbers there.

Speaker 2: 40:56

Jumping into some other news, fubo has announced a $5 a month price increase for their pro elite and premier plans Beginning January 10th. Current subscribers are going to see that in the next month or so, depending on when they pay in the month. In addition, a $1 a month price increase for content tied to RSNs and a $1 price increase for the stars bundle. Not surprisingly, fubo says that I'll just recap what they said here that programming partners raise the prices that they're being charged and unfortunately, they're saying they're forced to pass some of that increase on to consumers. They do note that in 2023, they added more than 70 sports, news and entertainment channels to the base package, including 10 new radio channels, and they say there's more in the way. So I'm not surprised they're trying to highlight hey, price went up but we gave you more content. They did also say that they plan to update cloud DVR to include unlimited hours in the coming months. They didn't say when. There's no update on that, but unlimited hours. I don't know if that's something that's actually something I should say that consumers are asking for. I don't know if some see that as like a value of okay, you're raising the price, but hey, I'm getting more DVR hours. I don't know.

Speaker 2: 42:24

We also got a quick number during Sony's global press conference at CES. They announced they now have 13 million paid note paid. They said very specifically paid subscribers to Crunchyroll. So interesting because we hadn't seen a number on that in quite some time. And everything else, mark, you know I'm working on right now is leading up to tomorrow to Peacock's wild card game. I've not been able to find out exactly what was paid for this. So the New York Times reported 100 million, wall Street Journal reported 110 and ESPN reported 120. Somebody's off by?

Speaker 3: 43:06

20% maybe.

Speaker 2: 43:10

So there was a media call this week for analysts only with the NFL and Peacock executives and they were specifically asked the number and they didn't answer the question. So I've yet to see anyone go on record for many of these companies and say what was paid. If someone has seen that, please do shoot me an email or message. I've not been able to find that every single place that I've looked, but it will be interesting to see what happens after the event and also the media live event that they had this week. It was interesting because the NFL was asked so this is a one-off event that Peacock has as of now. They're not under contract for additional exclusive playoff games next year.

Speaker 2: 44:04

And a member of the media asked NFL, how are you going to measure success of this event, Like, how do we know if Peacock's going to get another or Amazon or somebody else? And the NFL executive said that's a fair question. We're going to have to look at a lot of different factors. On viewership, Of course they talk to. Well, we have to go where the younger viewers are. Do we have any proof that younger viewers are on Peacock?

Speaker 3: 44:30

I've never seen that before. That always blows me away when that's the justification when the younger viewers are. My parents have streamed content for and you can say, well, mark, you set them up and you okay. That's harshly true. I did set them up, get the account set up, kind of get everything configured, but at the end of the day I'm not there literally with hand on remote. No dad go to Netflix or go to, they only stream content. They've been doing it for years, years and years and years and they're friends the same.

Speaker 2: 45:08

And also they make more money, which means they can afford to buy tickets and go to games.

Speaker 3: 45:16

Yeah, anyway, it's surprising that it's always where the younger viewers are.

Speaker 2: 45:21

To me, that doesn't surprise me more, because it's like we talked about its messaging. It sounds great Like oh, you have to reach younger viewers. But wasn't that the same thing we heard about Twitter? Wasn't that why the NFL did the deal with Twitter?

Speaker 3: 45:35

How long did that last?

Speaker 2: 45:36

a year, and they're like oh, we didn't really see the results we were expecting on that. So we hear that a lot, but I've never seen any stats. Again, someone correct me if you've seen them. I've never seen any stats from peacock.

Speaker 3: 45:50

Well, I'm sure there's stats out there somewhere. You know the Justify.

Speaker 2: 45:53

Sorry, that shows they're seeing a younger viewership on peacock. That's what I mean. I haven't seen that yet. So hey, anybody at.

Speaker 3: 46:03

Peacock, reach out If you've got some data to share.

Speaker 2: 46:07

Well, Mark, if they had the data to share?

Speaker 3: 46:11

they would. You can always ask.

Speaker 2: 46:12

Dan Right, you know you can imagine that question's already been asked If I had information to share publicly. I would, but I haven't seen anything publicly put out to date. And then Mark, finally too. It's been a busy week, but I finally got around to this. I know I've been saying this for so long in the podcast, but Thursday, january 18th, at 7pm.

Speaker 3: 46:37

Yes, yes, I'm glad to hear.

Speaker 2: 46:39

I will be doing a live zoom for anyone interested in advancing their career in the streaming industry. I'm going to be reviewing what you should be talking to you on your LinkedIn profile, what your resume should say. I'm going to be talking about best practices. I see so many people calling themselves a highly motivated and results driven executive. That is the wrong thing to say. Sometimes, results driven your results may stink. I see people say all the time I'm great at communication. No, you're terrible Because you didn't tell me how you communicate with clarity, consistency, candor. It's incredible, mark, how many links are broken. Incredible. How many links are broken on people's LinkedIn pages. Someone reached out yesterday about a job they were looking for and I said your LinkedIn photo that you have at the top, your skyscraper photo, is a photo of you speaking on stage, but it's been completely cut off, so the only thing you see is about from your waist to your knees. How do you not know that? Like, how do you not see that?

Speaker 3: 47:44

It's so high to me. And then it says attention to detail. Some of these photos In the profile somewhere, right, right, high attention to detail, and I'm just I just I don't understand it.

Speaker 2: 47:52

The top performing compared to whom? I see a lot of people calling themselves coach and mentors. That's weird to me because then, when you look at what their job is, they're an account manager. If you're an account manager, your job is not to be coaching and mentoring others, and that's that's not the case. I see a lot of quote products and services expertise, but they never define the product or services they have expertise in.

Speaker 2: 48:20

One recently emailed me looking for a technical position. I said you're not a fit for this job and they said why not? Here's all the things I know. And in the message they told me some technology and platforms and I said oh, that's great. You don't mention a single one of those on your LinkedIn page. So it's odd that so many LinkedIn pages are generic, and many times I'm hearing from people well, I want a lot of options in the market for jobs, so I don't want to be too specific on what I say. But then you're calling out account management, marketing, product development, coaching and mentorship. What job out there is hiring and looking for all those things combined into one job? Nothing. So LinkedIn is really where you have to start in terms of showcasing who you are, what you provide. You have to speak intelligently and intelligibly. You have to practice that, practicing speaking, you never stop. You can always get better at it.

Speaker 2: 49:24

So, as I said in the post, I can sit here and I can complain about people's LinkedIn pages or I can try and help them, and I am helping people every day. People reach out almost every day. Every week I hear from people, but I'm going to do this in a Zoom. I did do this about two and a half years ago. I got a couple hundred people on the Zoom. So if you go to my blog at streamedublogcom, you can see the post or just search in the word Zoom. Email me directly, hit me up on LinkedIn. I'll give you the link. The password is my last name and this will be January 18th at 7 pm.

Speaker 2: 50:01

This works well. I'll also do it more frequently. I'll do it at different time zones if people outside the US want to get access to it as well. The goal here is just to really help people in the industry level up and also talk about some certifications. I see people you know, project managers, for instance saying you know, okay, I'm going to go and I'm really going to focus on this PMP plus or another level of PMP, and I'm like well, look at the job posting. So let's say you want that. They want agile or stroma or scrum Like make sure you know what you should be getting.

Speaker 2: 50:35

So I look at hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of resumes a year. As I mentioned in the post, I've put help place people at Disney, NBC Sports, Akamai, Comcast, Amazon, Oracle, LHEO, AWS, Microsoft dozens of companies who reach out looking for individuals, and I do that for free. So I want to continue to try and spread this information, which is the whole point of the Zoom. So feel free to join the Zoom, grab a beer. I set it up for two hours, depending how many questions people have. I'm happy to take as many questions as people have during the Zoom. I am going to take questions via chat. I'm not going to open it up to video to everybody. That could be a free for all, but that is. That is January 18th at 7pm Eastern, so want more details? Can't find it on my blog? Just shoot me an email, Dan at DanRibboncom. Get me up on LinkedIn. I think it's important that we continue to share resources and help to people in the industry.

Speaker 2: 51:38

So whether you want to get into the industry, you're looking for a new job. I also get questions from people you know I'm in the industry but I want to move into a different segment of the industry. Make sense, maybe you're going from project and you want to go to product. It's a different type of a job. So, mark, that's what we've got this week. This is good. We've got about 29 minutes here. Kept it quick. Let's see everything except MLS that we talked about today is already up on LinkedIn, so listeners can check out my LinkedIn feed. You'll see all that.

Speaker 2: 52:13

If you have any questions for Mark and I, reach out anytime. We hope everyone's having a good new year. Everyone's feeling well. The amount of people with flu and cold seems to be the norm, mark January a lot of people. So those out. We hope you're up and back at it pretty soon. It's going to get busy the rest of this month. We've got earnings in 10 days or less, netflix and some others, so it's going to get real busy. But Mark and I appreciate you listening, as always. If you have any questions, reach out to us. We're always available. Otherwise, we'll talk to you next week. Thanks everyone for listening.

Speaker 1: 52:47

If you enjoyed the show, send it to a friend, have questions for Dan or Mark, connect with them on LinkedIn at any time, and be sure to check out Dan's blog at streamingmediablogcom.