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 0:24

Welcome to the Dan Rayburn podcast. I am Dan Rayburn, along with co-host Mark Donegan. We're recording on Monday, july 22nd, so we're kicking off the week actually with a podcast recording instead of last Friday.

Speaker 3 0:36

That's right.

Speaker 2 0:38

So, mark, let's hit two things here real quickly. We are recording this just after the market closed and we do have news out on the nba and warner boroughs discovery uh wbd has come out and said, quote regrettably, the league notified us of its intention to accept other offers for the games in our current rights package, leaving us to proceed under the matching rights provision, which is an uh wait right to provision, integral part of our current agreement and rights we have paid for under it, they said in a statement. So basically, they reviewed the offers and they've matched one of them Interesting.

Speaker 2 1:17

Which one they've matched but we don't know that to be, to be the Amazon one.

Speaker 3 1:20

Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 2 1:22

Uh, they say our matching paperwork was submitted to the league today. We look forward to the nba executing our new contract. So for all the back and forth talk of wbd over the last year, oh, we don't need nba. Yeah, we do. Maybe we'll match it. No, we won't. Well, that's right just put it out there. They have matched it interesting so let's wait to get confirmation that it is in fact the amazon plan yeah or package.

Speaker 2 1:49

I should package yeah but, uh, we, we have a little bit of update on that. Hopefully this doesn't go into any issue where you know the courts get involved or whatnot. Yeah, exactly they'd need to, but uh, that's, that's the latest on there. And then mark, before we get into things of just a week, because we're going to talk Netflix earnings in a minute and there are some people which we're going to go through, just analysts, wall Street people talking about investors being all concerned about Netflix, which I think is funny. I know let's just talk today about Delta and CrowdStrike. So for anyone who's stuck on Delta today, man, good luck to you. Delta canceled more than 800 flights today. They're the only ones to be still having problems. And what's fascinating, mark, around infrastructure and airlines is there's literally no incentive for them to do a better job.

Speaker 3 2:39

Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 2 2:40

Because for so many routes at least I fly there's no competition.

Speaker 3 2:44

Yeah.

Speaker 2 2:45

When they do make a mistake and they're fined, the fine is so low, even if it's in the tens of millions of dollars. Who cares? It doesn't impact the balance sheet. So interesting here with Delta and CrowdStrike and the reason I'm bringing both of them up, even though they're very different is there's all this talk in the media about Delta and stock taking a hit and brand. Oh my God, this is impacting them right now.

Speaker 2 3:14

Even with all going on with Delta in the last five days, their stock is up 1.2%. In the last six months, their stock is up just over 18%, even with all the issues that they're having, and they're the only ones having this issue compared to all the other airlines. Now I don't know if you saw this, mark, and listeners will love this, but the reason they're having problems getting things back up and running like normal is their crew scheduling relies on Windows Media, their crew scheduling calendar.

Speaker 3 3:49

Yeah, calendar.

Speaker 2 3:51

Relies on, not Windows Media relies on Windows.

Speaker 3 3:55

Windows yeah.

Speaker 2 3:57

So they can't get.

Speaker 1 3:57

This is a scheduling calendar. Yeah, they can't get staffing.

Speaker 2 4:03

What are we missing here?

Speaker 3 4:09

No incentive staffing.

Speaker 2 4:09

Exactly what are we missing here? This is no incentive operations tied to the maintenance of the plane.

Speaker 3 4:12

It is literally like the crew calendar. Yeah, they just can't get people there to staff the flight, so therefore you can't fly the airplane because they can't figure out who's supposed to be where because their calendar is down.

Speaker 2 4:22

I mean, the idea that you can't run that so easily in a cloud service is just mind boggling, but when you have no incentive to do a better job, you don't care. It's all comes down to it. But crazy, even with all that that's going on, their stock is still at 18.52% in the last six months. Now, CrowdStrike Everyone's talking about CrowdStrike. Here's a different way to think about it. Well, CrowdStrike what happened with CrowdStrike is unique in the sense that you have a lot of investors who've never heard of this company. You and I and others in the space have heard of it. Most have absolutely no clue who the hell CrowdStrike is. So it was interesting to hear take from from different people that when this actually happened with CrowdStrike, the first thing I heard some people say was so who is this company I've never heard of? Yeah, that a huge majority of Fortune 500 rely on, and why am I not investing in them?

Speaker 3 5:22

Yeah.

Speaker 2 5:23

So CNBC today talking about, oh, crowd strike, oh, it's down so much in the last two days. You know, oh, you know, oh, it's terrible, they're getting, they're getting slammed Right Year to date they're still up 7%. Yeah, in the last year. Mark, do you know how much crowd strike is up in the last 12 months?

Speaker 3 5:43

Well, I do, because I looked mark. Do you know how much crowd strike is up in the last 12?

Speaker 2 5:47

months. Well, I do because I looked 76.25 percent. Yeah, so, even getting crushed 25 percent in two days of trading down, yeah, you're still up 76 percent for the year and you're still up 184 percent for the past five years. So why am I bringing this up? Because perception is reality. Yeah, right, it just is. So all this talk that we always have what's going on in the market of? Oh man, they didn't hit their sub growth or the number.

Speaker 3 6:13

Oh, wall street's gonna they're in, they're in big trouble, they're in big trouble and it's like look at what happens when serious outage takes place.

Speaker 2 6:22

Yeah, yeah, tied, yeah, tied to infrastructure One physical infrastructure, one internet infrastructure.

Speaker 3 6:27

Yeah.

Speaker 2 6:28

And yet the stocks are still doing well overall. Yeah, yeah, overall. It's pretty incredible.

Speaker 3 6:33

And you know. So I'm looking. So you know they did suffer a $100 drop. You know they were so okay, you know that's painful. If I own CrowdStrike I would, you know, not be so happy. But what do you want to bet? That that crawls right back up over the next. You know, I don't know, 45 days. You know maybe even 30 days.

Speaker 2 6:53

Well, and here's the thing 60 days Don't even go by the 100. Because that was they. Just happened to be at a peak when they took their hit. But if you look at where they were in June 4th, at $305. You're absolutely right, April 9th $304. Yeah, yeah, If you go to February 24th $294. Yeah, January 29th $300.

Speaker 3 7:23

So they've been at this $305 amount for quite a few months Actually actually here's the way to look at it um the start of the year, so january 2nd because the market wasn't open on the first um, their stock price was 246 dollars and 89 cents. Today it closed at 263.91, right, you know, right, and, and you know, of course, they rode some nice little there. You know there was a little bit of growth there. There was a nice peak for, I guess, roughly a month, about a month, yeah, about a month, you know five weeks or something, but anyway, yeah, it's Now the credits they're going to have to issue regarding SLA.

Speaker 2 7:58

Oh yeah, it's going to be staggering. Oh yeah, so we'll see the impact after that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But just fascinating Even with this over one year, they're still up 76%. Yeah, yeah. So speaking numbers. Let's go into Netflix, netflix earnings. We've got a couple things to discuss here, not so much the numbers, but some of the things Netflix has said. Yeah, so they added just over 8 million subs.

Speaker 3 8:28

They've got a global sub count now of 277.6 million.

Speaker 2 8:30

300 million is absolutely in sight. Yeah, it's amazing. Free cash flow 1.2 billion. And they still expect full year free cash flow of approximately. There were 6 billion. Yeah, last year was 6.92, so a little less than last year, but they are investing.

Speaker 2 8:43

Now let's talk advertising here. Netflix once again said they don't expect advertising to be a primary driver of their revenue growth this year or 2025. They say the near-term challenge and medium-term opportunity is that we're scaling faster than our ability to monetize our growing ad inventory, but advertising is where this is at. So in 2026, the company expects Avod to be the primary growth driver in their business. A number they gave out. This quarter said in Q2, members to Netflix, avod playing with 34%. Sorry, this is in Q1. As 45% of new member signups opted for the ad tier where it was eligible, so 45% are going for ad.

Speaker 2 9:31

I've seen some suggest that. You know, with Netflix deciding they're going to stop giving out submetrics next year. Wall Street's concerned. You know this or that? Yeah, yeah, here's the thing I'll say to that. Netflix has been reinforcing that over time, its business is going to move from a high growth low profit business to a slow growth, high profit business. Yeah, absolutely so. They said they are on track to achieve its quote critical scale goals in all its ad markets by fiscal year 25, which also, by the way, will improve its free cash flow.

Speaker 2 10:09

So the advertising business is not struggling or failing. I've seen a couple people write that specific title with the word struggling or failing. But from day one of netflix talking about getting into the ad business, they've set extremely realistic expectations of how long it would take them to get to scale yeah they said it would not be easy and it would not be done quickly.

Speaker 2 10:36

Yeah, so a couple things to read here. Mark it's interesting how many people want to be negative on Netflix's ad business and the posts I see in LinkedIn of see I told you so type thing Like look, the revenue wasn't great From day one. Here's what Netflix said Quote this will build slowly over time. Quote it will take us time to build up our membership base and associated ad revenue. Quote it's still early days for ads and we have lots to do. Quote our advertising business in a few years will likely look quite different than what it looks like on day one.

Speaker 3 11:13

Yeah.

Speaker 2 11:14

Quote we anticipate growing our membership in the ad plan gradually over time. They have been so clear from day one that this is a three-year build out to get advertising revenue to the point of where it has a material impact on revenue. Yeah, so what did Netflix say in their earnings call?

Speaker 2 11:37

Well here's what they said they told us that they are on track to where they will see the ad business at scale in fiscal year 2025, growing in 2026. Which means from the day they launched November of 2022, it will have taken three years. Exactly what they told us. Yeah, and they're also building out their own tech stack, of course, which will give them more control. Yeah, of course. So for all the folks writing for headlines, just stop. It's not the case. I also saw someone here, Mark, that wrote Netflix delivers a strong quarterly report helping ease prior investor concerns. What were the investor concerns?

Speaker 3 12:31

Boy, I sure you know. So again, looking at their stock growth year to date, so from January 2nd they're up 30, the stock is up. Let's see. Was it about 38%? I believe? Let me check yeah, 38% In the last year. So the last 12 months they're up 51%. Boy, I sure there's a lot of companies that would love to have those investor concerns Right, and even in the last five days, since earnings, it's down 2.3%.

Speaker 2 13:00

Yeah. So this whole idea that there's investor concerns again just not relevant. No-transcript. So even with CrowdStrike, I wrote. I read six articles a day about CrowdStrike, about stock rush, stock rush. Not one of those six articles also happened to mention. By the way, even with this, they're still up 75 plus percent yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 13:46

Cause.

Speaker 2 13:47

That should be part of the article. So Netflix is not having problems with Wall Street. A couple of things they said here. They said that they see no advantage in bundling their service with other OTT players and actually called out Disney Plus and Max due to Netflix's size and scale and depth and breadth of content. So really what they're saying is it doesn't benefit us to bundle with others, it benefits others if they bundle with us. True, very true.

Speaker 2 14:18

Uh, sports they talked a little bit about the nfl, not too much, uh. But one thing I think that's important here is when it comes to live. They say they're in live content because their members love it. It drives a ton of engagement. It's exciting. Uh, let's see. Ted said those things are very valuable. Advertisers like it as well. Paraphrasing here. But here's, here's the quote, quote when you offer this event model that we're building on, we're really excited about our opportunity to do that without the financial risk that you're talking on. We're really excited about our opportunity to do that without the financial risk that you're talking about. So notice, they said event model. That's right. I thought that was an important word to call out there, because they didn't say, you know, bringing on an entire calendar year of sports or an entire season.

Speaker 3 15:06

And he's he's referenced and used very similar language before in describing their, their live sports. Uh, approach, I guess you'd call it an approach strategy yeah, they've been very clear live events. You know, maybe maybe it's even more accurate, because I wonder if they even like think of it like, oh, there's live sports and then there's, you know, these live like comedic events and, I don't know, maybe one day, concerts. I wonder if they just think of it as events. You know, it's just events.

Speaker 2 15:38

Well, so far, that's always what it's been. It's been a one-off event for them. We've got the Tyson fight coming up. The two NFL games are one-off.

Speaker 3 15:51

Now the moment they start doing all the wrestling content. That's no longer a one-off.

Speaker 2 15:53

Yeah, that's right that'll be the first piece of live content that's on a regular schedule. But outside of that, yeah, it's interesting how they keep referring to events yeah, live events so interesting. We'll see how that continues, but netflix is certainly not not struggling here um wall street today. Like the stock, it was up over $20 at one point. Yeah, I didn't look at what it closed at, but Netflix still has a huge advantage across everything.

Speaker 1 16:19

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2 16:21

A couple other things that they talked to here. They were pretty high level in terms of where they thought ARPU was going to go for the ad business. Mm-hmm, that we don't know. But the fact that they keep saying critical scale of the ad market by fiscal year 25 is important. Now in the NFL games Mark we've talked about this before Last year the Las Vegas Raiders and Kansas City Chiefs drew an average audience of more than 25 million viewers on CBS. It was the most watched Christmas Day game in 34 years. So, man, we're really going to have a lot to watch on Christmas this year, just in terms of how that streamed us.

Speaker 3 17:00

Yeah, yeah, really.

Speaker 2 17:01

It's going to be very interesting to watch that. And then last piece on Netflix, mark, I'm sure you saw. I posted the link that. I saw that, just I think it was about two weeks ago and it was that Netflix was granted a patent.

Speaker 3 17:16

A patent announcement? Yeah.

Speaker 2 17:17

Yeah, for techniques for delivering concurrent media content via content delivery networks. So basically, high level describes how media segments are streamed and managed. Describes how media segments are streamed and managed, and the patent focuses on efficient caching technologies that adapt to real-time requests, which obviously means better QoS to users. So how do you ensure that caches never serve an out-of-date object for a live event without relying on a purge cache and validation step, which is pretty much what they're doing here? I threw that up, mark, just because I thought it was interesting. I threw it up on LinkedIn. I didn't realize the interest that it would actually get. It's at almost 70,000 impressions, wow, yeah on LinkedIn and what did.

Speaker 3 17:59

I put up two days ago.

Speaker 2 18:00

Yeah, yeah, quite a few comments and I was like, wow, that's, that's a lot. So I'm going to keep a closer eye on Netflix patents. They do have a lot. Last I looked it was over 900. They actually have a section on Netflix's website where they list every patent number, once it's granted, and the date it was granted. Yeah, interesting. They don't link to the patents, so you have to do some research.

Speaker 3 18:24

Yeah, you have to go look it up, but they do list them all on their website. It's relatively easy to find most of them with the patent number.

Speaker 2 18:32

You know I thought it was interesting, mark. A couple of people did email me after I put it on LinkedIn and said how'd you find this news? I was like really Google news alerts like just set up Netflix patent as a phrase and you'll get an email.

Speaker 3 18:44

You'll get it. The patent comes through.

Speaker 2 18:46

This isn't rocket science. I'm still kind of shocked how people don't know how to read news in our industry. It's weird to me. Let's jump into Verizon. They hit earnings this morning. Verizon lost 65,000 Fios video subscribers, so they ended a Q2 with 2.81 million pay TV subs 2.81 million, wow. So it's time for these guys to exit the market. I just can't see.

Speaker 2 19:11

Mark how they stay in this business, because at some point, if they're not already there, there's a threshold of X. Number of subs for pay TV means they're losing money. Yeah, absolutely they have to be, I mean. So what point do you just say, okay, this business isn't profitable, it's not driving 5g at home and all?

Speaker 3 19:30

those other things. Yeah, All the yeah.

Speaker 2 19:33

I don't know when that is, but they're at 2.81 million. That's declining every, every quarter. Yeah, at the current rate they're going. Uh, let's see. So they were down 2.88 from the last quarter. So let's, let's just say, if they lose another by next year, if they stay at the rate they've been, even just flat over the last four quarters, by the end of next year they'd be down to just under 2.5 million. Yeah, it's not a lot, mm-mm. Okay, now let's go into some Quite. A lot of soccer news here, football, a couple different things, sorry football, yes, not soccer, sorry Football.

Speaker 2 20:17

Football for our European listeners For all European fans and listeners out there, or actually I should say rest of the world.

Speaker 3 20:23

I mean, it's football in Latin America, it's football in Asia.

Speaker 2 20:27

That's true. And, mark, last time I looked about, 22% of our listening audience was from EMEA. Oh, that's great. Yeah, that's great. Wow, definitely have those listeners. So CBS sports and series a Syria, let's see. They announced a multi-year rights deal, so CBS Sports will continue to be the exclusive US English language rights holder. For every CA Coppa Italia and Super Coppa Italiana match. Paramount Plus will air more than 400 games a season. It's the widest distribution ever in American television 400 games Wow, that's a lot. Select matches are going to air on CBS CBS Sports Network. Let's see they first. Cbs first began broadcasting these in the 2021 2022 season, and the upcoming season begins less than a month, in August 17th. Now, one thing we didn't get in no even rumors was no terms of the deal came out hmm, and no one even said oh, I heard this or that, so we have no numbers on that one.

Speaker 2 21:38

Uh. Next one is we got league one soccer rights. So this has just been an absolute mess, uh, for for quite quite a while here, so that apparently they originally wanted 1 billion. Nobody was willing to pay that. So we've got the zone and being they've come in to do a joint deal. The zone is going to broadcast eight out of nine league matches per day, as well as the top 10 matches of the season. They're going to pay 400 million euros being. For its part, we'll broadcast one match per day, then the best one week out of two. So there's some other things here that they're going to do. They're going to pay 100 million pounds a year. So the league basically is going to make 500 million pounds per year. 500, yeah, which apparently is below the 624 million it made from the 21 to 24 timeframe. So that's, that's interesting. Someone commented the viewer is really the big loser in this deal, because you're talking about a subscription of 35 pounds for DAZN, another 15 for beans. You're talking 50 pounds just to watch lead one.

Speaker 3 22:52

Yeah, and yeah that's a lot. Now there was also talk of.

Speaker 2 22:56

these guys were going to go direct-to-consumer, but if they didn't take the deal, there's no way they would have gone direct-to-consumer in a matter of weeks.

Speaker 3 23:07

Yeah, yeah, and been able to replace that revenue yes.

Speaker 2 23:11

There's no way.

Speaker 3 23:12

No, no, no.

Speaker 2 23:25

So interesting how we're seeing a shift in some sporting rights to where these leagues yes.

Speaker 2 23:30

There's no way ended. It's being reported. They're entering. They've ended their discussion with apple. What's been reported for quite a while was that apple offered a billion dollars over a period of time I don't know if it was per year or how long it was and fifa wanted four billion. So they're off there on such a large number. So fifa came out and said they've launched an invitation to tender for media rights which will cover the america's, asia, the middle east and north africa. Uh, this is an expanded men's world cup. So it's set to take place in the united states, uh, next year june, july. But despite being less than a year away we've seen a lot of articles on this fifa has yet to finalize a meteorites partner, host cities or venues for the tournament. So that means you're not promoting it, you're not selling tickets, you don't know where it's going to be. That's just ridiculous.

Speaker 3 24:24

For an event of this scale to be under 12 months from the opening Wow, I mean, what are you thinking just from an operations and logistics standpoint? Oh yeah, yeah, you do events. Can you imagine what it takes to pull off? You know?

Speaker 2 24:40

the World Cup. That's just insanity. And you haven't picked out venues. To me that's the you know. At least you knew your venues. You're setting up a lot in the venue Video, audio. You know where your trucks are going to be, how to uplink to the bird, all that kind of stuff. You don't even know your venues yeah wow, wow.

Speaker 2 24:59

So, um, apparently, actually the proposed deal. Now another news outlet is saying with apple, apple is offering up 800 million pounds, so under the 1 billion initially offered. So, um, you know, mark, I could definitely use a schooling by some European friends and all the different football leagues that are going on out there. But looking at this, you know, it's interesting to show that. You know. This is a new event. It's not clear which clubs and which stars are actually going to be present.

Speaker 2 25:34

It's not clear which clubs and which stars are actually going to be present, and also the late announcement of the venues. It was written isn't helping because Barcelona, Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal and AC Milan are among the clubs who have not qualified.

Speaker 3 25:51

Those are huge clubs. I mean I don't follow you know I don't follow football. But yeah, but like I know, like fans for man U and Barcelona and AC Milan, anyway, like they're diehard.

Speaker 2 26:06

Right, and that's going to be your audience.

Speaker 3 26:08

And then you're also missing stars.

Speaker 2 26:10

So you don't have the stars. You've got major clubs that haven't qualified and I don't know if they still can. I don have the stars. You've got major clubs that haven't qualified and I don't know if they still can. I don't know the rules. Yeah exactly, haven't qualified, you don't have venues, you're not selling tickets.

Speaker 1 26:22

You have no media partner. What are you doing?

Speaker 2 26:23

yeah, who's in charge of this organization and how do you replace them? That's just, that's insanity. It starts in june, so you're you're almost at the point of where you're 10 months out. So to think you're going to pull all that together, wow, good luck. Yeah, good luck.

Speaker 2 26:42

For any fans who are really looking forward to Club World Cup. I feel sorry for you because the chances of that happening may be slim. Let's go into some streaming news here. Mark Bundling news somewhat verizon they're offering a new plan now. So, let's see, this is the first time netflix and peacock been bundled together. So for limited time, verizon customers can buy one year of peacock premium and they get one year of netacock Premium and they get one year of Netflix Premium plan for free. So interesting there, obviously not a direct bundle between the content owners, it's just Verizon doing that.

Speaker 2 27:25

Optimum has also announced a new video offering, launched something they're calling Entertainment TV. So this is a new TV package which they say is at a low cost, but it's available only on Optimum Stream. And this is offered in, let's see, new York, new Jersey, connecticut, north Carolina, so quite a few states. It's priced at $30 a month. They say it has 80 plus top rated channels. Well, some of these channels aren't top rated, but you'll notice. Okay, it's got AMC, comedy Central, discovery, food, but of course it doesn't have sports in here. Yeah, no, it has local news. It doesn't say for how many, though. Oh, this just happens to say across the tri-state area, so maybe it's just tri-state. How many, though? Oh, this just happens to say across the tri-state area, so maybe it's just tri-state.

Speaker 2 28:21

So $30 package that gets you some sort of TV streaming, only If you happen to like Lifetime, allmark, hgtv, food Network, definitely targeting a specific audience. Yeah, absolutely. Next up is a discount for Macs for US college students so they can take a 50% discount off max with ads plan. I saw only the with ads monthly plan, but that's cool because the cost is now $5 a month for for college kids for max. That's a no brainer. Yeah, totally. So that's, that's a great deal there. You know you got kids sending back to school with you school with a plan for $60 a year. You can't go wrong, yeah, unless maybe that keeps them from doing the schoolwork.

Speaker 3 29:02

Well, yeah, exactly, I'm like maybe I don't do that.

Speaker 2 29:05

Yeah, maybe I don't know, I don't have kids, that's not my problem.

Speaker 1 29:08

I say get to them.

Speaker 2 29:09

That's right. Let them stream it. Let them stream it. We also have news here of Warner Bros Discovery layoffs. We haven't gotten an official number from the company we're talking about. What's being reported is 1,000 employees impacted overall. That again has not been confirmed by WBD. It is reported that it's different groups across the entertainment company finance, production, business affairs and that a very small number of employees actually come from max. But wbd also hasn't filed any sort of sec filing in that, which they don't have to. If it's under a certain amount of employees laid off I believe it's under 10 of the company they don't have to have to announce it.

Speaker 2 29:49

So we've got some sort of layoffs there, but no further details yet as to who really that's impacting Mark. I reached out to some folks I know on the Max team. They didn't see any across the Max team that they were aware of.

Speaker 2 30:02

So it sounds like that is true, that it's not impacting the streaming side. Yeah, that's good. Comcast put out a release saying they're using well, comcast put out a release saying they're offering enhanced 4K and Xfinity's X1 platform, which is premiering for the Paris Olympics and will be available on the USA Network. I traded some emails with them and they did come out and tell me they are using HEVC for this. It's going to support Dolby Vision, hdr and Dolby Atmos. They also said it's going to be streamed at the highest bitrate rate, but they wouldn't tell me what that max bit rate was yeah, yeah, I thought that was that was interesting yeah, I just wanted to know.

Speaker 2 30:40

I mean, some people in the comments are like max berry doesn't matter, it's like well, true, it doesn't matter completely, but it would be interesting to know.

Speaker 3 30:46

Yeah, but latter. But is it? Yeah, exactly, is it 25 megabits or is it 16, you know?

Speaker 2 30:52

I'm guessing it's 16 to 18 range, like others that we've seen. And keep in mind this is not native right. This is enhanced, so it's important.

Speaker 3 31:02

Oh, that's right, that's right, that's right, it's 1080p. It's 1080p upscaled. Yeah, yeah, I mean, why not just call?

Speaker 2 31:08

it upscaled. Well, I get why they don't call it that, because you and I would know that. But consumers would be like what the hell is upscale? Yeah, yeah, and that's okay.

Speaker 3 31:16

And that's exactly I was going to say. That's why the word enhanced is very strategic, because if they said UHD or they said 4K, that is not accurate. It's technically not accurate. Yeah, yeah, but enhanced 4K, like okay.

Speaker 2 31:34

They also said that they are delivering this with ultra-low latency. So I reached out to them again for a definition on that. What they told me was they're comparing latency against quote, other streaming services and comparable to OTA.

Speaker 3 31:50

Yeah, sure.

Speaker 2 31:51

But when I asked, well, how do you really define it? They said quote only seconds behind all the live action unfolding in Paris. So what they're doing is comparing this to what's taking place on the field and they're saying it's a couple seconds behind. Yeah, I did see another comment from them somewhere where they said under 10 seconds.

Speaker 3 32:11

Yeah.

Speaker 2 32:11

So a couple seconds versus under 10 seconds. It's kind of still in the ballpark.

Speaker 3 32:20

Yeah, exactly so I was seconds. Yeah, so a couple seconds versus under 10 seconds. It's kind of still in the ballpark. Yeah, exactly so I was going to ask you. Um, I have an opinion of what the target is, but were you guessing like that?

Speaker 2 32:25

8 to 10 second range, somewhere, somewhere in there, until I can actually compare it, I don't know. Uh, yeah, also, you know they're saying only seconds behind, then under 10 seconds. Well, first, I don't consider that ultra low latency, I consider that low latency.

Speaker 3 32:37

Yeah, yeah, that's where ultra low is definitely not accurate. You know, ultra low is very traditionally understood to be under a second. You know, usually even I would say under two. Yeah, I mean, there's different definitions, but it's definitely not six, seven seconds, you know. But not ull, it's not ultra low latency at that.

Speaker 2 32:58

Yeah, if you look at what the cdns have all published, you know an akamai is a great chart as well. If you look at two seconds and under that's, yeah, some are having a one and a half, but we're in the, we're all green there. That's where ultra low latency is. Yeah, so I would have called this low latency yeah, I've called this ultra low, if I was them. But again, consumers don't know, they don't care. Yeah, they, they don't see it anyway. Now, why do you need that to be, uh, just low latency to begin with? I, I don't really know. Um, I, I don't think you need it lower than 10, to be honest, this is the Olympics. You're not really getting together with others to watch this Like it's the world cup or the super bowl. Yeah, are there people betting against the Olympics? People bet on anything.

Speaker 3 33:44

Yeah, they bet on anything. So yeah, they probably are. It's obviously not a big sports betting event.

Speaker 2 33:49

Yeah, yeah, uh, so. So I think what they're doing is fine. I don't think you need it any lower than that. Yeah, uh, then finally here, mark. Uh, this is the first time.

Speaker 2 33:58

So we talk all the time about how, when it comes to viewership numbers, fox is the one organization Fox sports, I should say that never seems to break out streaming. They broke out streaming. Hey, finally, all right, good, the first time that I've ever seen their overall pay TV viewership numbers. They actually stripped out the number that was streaming only. So the UEFA Euro 2024 final on Fox had a streaming average minute audience of 227,000, which was up quite a bit Out of the total viewership of 6.6 million combined pay tv and streaming. So that means that the 227 number made up 3.7 percent of total viewership of the average minute audience.

Speaker 2 34:44

They also said the most streamed copa america in fox sports history was argentina versus columbia at 338 000 ama. So interesting for them to put out numbers. Their numbers were up. I think it was over a hundred percent year over year. So maybe that's why they did from a streaming standpoint. But you know this is an important number for listeners to understand because for all the talk in our industry market, like sports viewing numbers, and they're so big. We now have numbers from not only NBC sports, who's been putting them out for a long time, and in Peacock but, now we have them from Fox Sports as well.

Speaker 2 35:21

The streaming numbers when it comes to all these sporting events is still extremely small compared to the rest of the pay tv ownership yeah, it's reality yeah, that's reality, for sure and we've seen that already for the Super Bowl, obviously the Olympics. The AMA number there previous years it's never gone above 2 million, so that's not going to be super large, but interesting. I mean great that Fox Sports is putting out these numbers yeah that's good More of these numbers are certainly helpful.

Speaker 1 35:50

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2 35:52

So interesting too, how that ties into. To wrap this up, obviously Warner Bros Discovery and NBA, because now, if they're truly getting that content, we also have to think about that's additional content that'll be in venue sports whenever that launches. Yeah, because that's one-third of the owners is Warner Bros Discovery. Sure, one third of the owners is Warner Bros Discovery, so they must be excited. That sounds like it's not a done deal, contract isn't executed, but it sounds like now they'll have NBA in that package which is great for them.

Speaker 2 36:23

That's good. More sports, top tier sport as well. Yeah, what do you?

Speaker 3 36:29

think that'll do, if anything to League Pass, you know, does that?

Speaker 2 36:34

change. You know, I don't know because, to be honest, league pass. It's funny. You mentioned that.

Speaker 3 36:40

I obviously know, what that is, but I haven't heard that brand it's so yeah, yeah, but it's, it's still out there, it is.

Speaker 2 36:47

But I can't remember the last time we even got any viewership numbers from league pass. Yeah, yeah, when I when I remember the last lead pass number being put out, there was over a million subs. But I don't remember how long, it was a long time ago, but I don't know how long well, uh, let's see.

Speaker 3 37:08

you know you had uh uh, microsoft media, kind, microsoft MediaKind and NBA speak at Streaming Summit, not this year but the year before, and you know they presented, I think, some very loose ballpark numbers, but I don't think I've seen anything.

Speaker 2 37:32

No, I haven't seen anything specific since then. So the last thing I find out here is the NBA did put out a press release at the end of the 2020-2023 season, so they put this out in April of 2023.

Speaker 2 37:46

Yeah, they said they had record-breaking engagement across all their apps, which include League Pass, nba. So NBA generated views. Let's see YouTube, instagram, nba digital platforms. So talked about how many views the NBA app got. That doesn't help us at all, yeah, so in this entire press release, they only make one mention of league pass. Yeah, that's it, and they don't say any growth on league pass, other than just including it in many other platforms yeah, yeah interesting.

Speaker 2 38:26

I wonder what the plan is what the plan is there nba league pass here's something separate from the NBA saw 50% growth in subscribers. That's obviously completely unhelpful. Yeah, yeah, In 2024, they said NBA League Pass subscriptions were up 12%. I don't know what they were comparing that to. It doesn't say there so yeah, completely unknown. I don't know what it'll do to that. It doesn't say there so yeah, completely unknown. I don't know what it'll do to that. It's a good question.

Speaker 3 38:58

Yeah, it's interesting.

Speaker 2 39:00

All right. So what do we have next week coming up? Mark? We've got Comcast earnings, microsoft earnings, meta earnings, amazon, apple, altice, so we're back in the harder earnings season.

Speaker 3 39:12

Back in the middle of it, yeah.

Speaker 2 39:14

So let's see, we're going to be taking a break for the next week while I bounce out of here, and then we'll be back with a podcast where we'll cover really all those earnings. Plus we're going to have a couple others, because we're also going to have Fubo, and then right after that we've got Disney WBD and Param, and then right after that we've got disney wbd and paramount. We've got those three within a 24 hour period the week of august 5th. So that's that's going to be a busy week. That will definitely be interesting to hear additional news from them just in terms of what they're working on with with the paramount in particular, paramount global and skydance, but definitely some good data coming up.

Speaker 2 39:54

So, uh, mark, everything we talked about today I've already put online so people can find that on LinkedIn. Uh, if you have any questions, reach out to Mark and I. We are around, I'll be. I'll be traveling around a bit, but definitely available on. Emails can be easiest, but any questions, please reach out to us time. We appreciate everyone listening and we'll be back in about 10 days with another podcast. Everyone stay safe. Everyone get to where they're going. Good luck with the airlines. I hope in a couple days everything's clear and I got to fly out of here and bounce around.

Speaker 3 40:24

Yeah, I'm flying out Wednesday morning Wednesday okay.

Speaker 2 40:29

Good luck everybody, Hope I can make it, yeah, but we'll talk to you all next podcast. Thanks very much.

Speaker 1 40:35

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.