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 Donegan, recording a little earlier in the week than we usually do, but we've got, of course, the NAB show coming up, so by the time we drop this, mark, I would expect we are actually probably exactly one week out.

Speaker 1 0:36

Yeah.

Speaker 2 0:37

So I am looking forward to being done, to having all the pre-planning and the day of and just I have a lot of speaking this year on stage two. It's really just it's tiring when you're talking three, four, five hours a day. So looking forward to all the content. We've actually added a couple couple of great pieces of contents and we last spoke Roku's doing a fireside chat with Braze about some data, so that's interesting. And then I did mention, I think last week, about the Sphere in Las Vegas potentially doing a presentation that is now confirmed, with MSG coming on board as well, talking about how they stream to the Sphere. So that's super interesting. I definitely want to hear all about that.

Speaker 2 1:24

Yeah, for sure, I've not had a chance to check out the sphere in person. So I'm trying to see if somehow I could slip away for an hour or two and check out one of the shows, but at this point that's going to be a bit hard. But I wouldn't be surprised if we have a lot of attendees checking that out while they're there for a couple days, which would be good. So let's jump here, mark, into the news. This week we can keep this podcast fairly short. There wasn't too much news really breaking this week Some sports news and licensing deals. But first let's do the Disney news. There's a couple pieces here. So Bob Iger and the board won the proxy battle fight.

Speaker 3 2:06

They have survived.

Speaker 2 2:14

They have survived. They've all been reelected. Uh. So the full slate of 12 directors, uh, was elected by um. What they say is a substantial margin over the nominees that we're trying to get in there. So, uh, that's the first thing. That's just done. Put that behind us Now.

Speaker 2 2:27

Bob Iger did do just over a 30-minute interview on Thursday April 4th in the morning with CNBC and he talked about a lot DTC becoming profitable, naming his successor, just a lot of the things Disney's working on.

Speaker 2 2:45

Almost nothing was things we haven't already heard, sure, but a couple points did come out. So the first thing he did say is the new ESPN streaming service, not the JV one with Fox and WBD, but the new ESPN service. Whatever that will be called, it will launch in the fall of 2025 and it will be bundled within Disney Plus. What he said was that it was going to be very similar to how Hulu is now integrated into Disney Plus, but he gave out no other details on pricing, naming of the service. He did not answer any questions around the JV deal with Fox and WBD. There were no updated subscriber numbers. He did say in the next earnings call with Wall Street, they are going to talk about the Hulu integration with Disney Plus and what they've already seen from that. So he's hinting that they're seeing some good engagement times and they're seeing people who only were in Disney Plus not watching Hulu content but now are, since it's tied in.

Speaker 3 3:53

Yes.

Speaker 2 3:54

Then again, most executives, when they roll out something like that, says it's wildly successful or we're super happy. So I don't really know what that means we're super happy. The early results are really positive early results and keep in mind this has only rolled out.

Speaker 3 4:10

What uh week week now yeah, so how much data have you collected in a week? So it truly is early results, that's very early.

Speaker 2 4:19

Yeah, but they like where it's headed, so let's see what they have to say on that. Yeah, a couple other disney things. Uh, he also announced that disney will start to crack down on password. But they like where it's headed, so let's see what they have to say on that. A couple other Disney things. He also announced that Disney will start to crack down on password sharing in June. In quote a few countries and markets, so they're going to start there. And then he said they will do a quote, full rollout in September. I assume full rollout means everywhere, but he didn't say everywhere or globally, so I don't know what full rollout means exactly, but it sounds like that's where they're going. He also commented again that quote Netflix is the gold standard in streaming. Once again, ceo Disney talking about how much he respects Netflix for what they've done.

Speaker 2 5:03

Yeah, and then, mark, there's some stats here as well for IPL. So Disney has IPL in India on TV. So television audience for opening day was 169, sorry, 168 million viewers, and it had a record of 61 million. What they say is concurrently so TV only. But interesting to look at the TV numbers when compared to streaming numbers. Yeah, I always like looking at that.

Speaker 3 5:40

Sure.

Speaker 2 5:42

So that's really it on the Disney news. Next up we have Formula One. So some Formula One news with MotoGP. So Formula One is owned by Liberty Media and they've announced the takeover of MotoGP's parent company, dorna. So Liberty Media will now acquire approximately 86% of Dorna. The enterprise value of this transaction is 4.2 billion euros, so it's a big deal. It's expected to be completed by the end of 2024. There's definitely going to be some regulatory scrutiny on that.

Speaker 3 6:16

Yeah.

Speaker 2 6:17

But as far as racing goes, that's a big consolidation right there.

Speaker 3 6:21

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2 6:24

NHL. This is an interesting one. There's a rumor that Amazon might get the rights to take over the entire NHL Monday night package from Rogers in Canada, which would include playoffs, and it would be for the remaining two years of Rogers contract. Now, none of the people reporting on this Mark was saying why it would take over the rights from Rogers. If Rogers already has the contract, why would the rights go to somebody else?

Speaker 3 6:49

Yeah, that's interesting.

Speaker 2 6:51

So I don't know if Rogers is trying to get out of it. I wasn't really sure. Nobody said in their reporting Somebody did say that behind the scenes the technical arrangement between Amazon and Sportsnet are already in place. Behind the scenes the technical arrangement between Amazon and Sportsnet are already in place. So apparently from a technical implementation that could already take place. But you know hockey in Canada that's a big deal obviously.

Speaker 3 7:17

That's huge. That's a religion, yeah.

Speaker 2 7:19

So the fact it would move from Rogers, where people are very used to seeing it on TV, to where it might move exclusively only to streaming, oh man, I don't want to make those Canadians mad, not with hockey. You know how many are going to go on TV to look for it and not be able to find it. Yeah, I don't know if that's a good move on Amazon's part there. Let's go to NBA. The NBA has teamed up with Roku to launch what they're saying are their first ever Fast Channels Sorry, fast Channel which is exclusively available through the Roku channel, but only for a limited time. Roku didn't say what that limited time was. The channel is going to feature classic games, highlights, recaps, documentaries, some original series. What, I wonder, of course, is anybody watching that?

Speaker 3 8:11

Yeah, exactly, I think the point is, this is all old. You know old content, mostly old, old games, and you know it's so. It is sports content, but yeah, it's yeah, you're not going to watch for free.

Speaker 2 8:26

It's not live.

Speaker 3 8:28

Ad-sponsored NBA games.

Speaker 2 8:30

I also wonder who's selling the ads in this. I'm going to make the assumption again, assumption that it's Roku, because it's in the Roku channel.

Speaker 3 8:37

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 8:38

Sure, but don't know, they didn't talk about that. In terms of briefings and in the press release yeah, but another fast channel offering? Don't know, they didn't talk about that. In terms of briefings and then the press release yeah, but another fast channel offering. Let's go to another partially fast channel offering. So DAZN is announcing exclusive deal with the PGA Tour when they're going to offer the PGA Tour Pass, which is a standalone subscription within DAZN, and this is going to be for the Middle East, north Africa and Southeast Asia. But in addition to that, the zone will also distribute a global PGA Tour fast channel which will be free. I think it's interesting, mark. They say it's global, but then they say excluding United Kingdom, ireland, germany, spain, france, australia and China. Okay, so it's not really global.

Speaker 3 9:26

Yeah.

Speaker 2 9:28

So that's a new service Dizona is going to have. And then going into more news here on distribution deals, diamond Sports Group has renewed its distribution deal with Charter Communications. So they already had a deal in place, so this renews it. However, it only allows customers on Charter Spectrum TV select tier sorry, select plus tier is what they call it so you have to be paying at least $1. $75 a month with charter in this particular package to get access to live local NBA, nba and NHL games. Some additional news here tied to sports Endeavor Group Holdings has agreed to be acquired by a PE private equity firm, silver Lake, and a deal that values Endeavor at $13 billion. Now, very important here $13 billion. For those that may know Endeavor it seems very low, but keep in mind this does not include any of the assets of WWE and UFC, so those are held under a corporation called TKO Group which is controlled by Endeavor. But that is not part of the deal. If it was part of the deal, silver Lake said it would value the company at over $25 billion.

Speaker 3 10:51

Yeah, yeah, and TKO is going to remain a separate ticker, right, correct, Separately publicly traded company Certainly benefits from being owned by Endeavor. Interesting.

Speaker 2 11:06

So they've been. Silver Lake has been an investor in Endeavor since 2012. So not too surprising that a P deal is done here. They know the business extremely well.

Speaker 3 11:18

Yeah.

Speaker 2 11:19

So they expect to expand on that as well, the business. So a lot going on there with Endeavor. Yeah, another one here, mark. This was an article that sort of popped up from about two weeks ago based on some filings legal filings but this one I guess it's kind of a little confusing. So there's a class action, antitrust case really, against Meta and it's filed on behalf of consumers and advertisers and it alleges that Meta is a monopoly in the social media market Okay.

Speaker 2 11:58

Okay, within this filing, they are accusing Facebook of killing its own streaming service just to help Netflix, to help sell ads. In 2018, meta purposely didn't have Facebook Watch do very well because of a special relationship between Netflix and Facebook and that Netflix was spending so much advertising on Facebook. So interesting how this is all playing out, because from 2011 to 2019 for those that don't know, uh, reed hastings at netflix sat on netflix aside on facebook sport. So pretty interesting. What they're saying here is that there's a time period, many years, where netflix was allegedly granted special access to Facebook users' private message inboxes, privileged analytic tools, all in exchange for $100 million advertising deals. So they're saying the plaintiffs here allege that the whole reason Facebook sort of exited the video business was to keep their advertising deal with Netflix so that Netflix keeps spending money with them. For those that might remember, it was 2017 that Facebook Watch began signing deals. Original TV shows.

Speaker 3 13:43

They were licensing.

Speaker 2 13:45

They were licensing some as well. Yeah, yeah, they had a little bit of a budget we don't truly know how much so apparently Facebook and Netflix were starting to potentially butt heads. And then there's some interesting emails that are included in the suit where Reed Hastings and Netflix I'm going to paraphrase here, I don't have them in front of me Basically, we were saying to Zuckerberg well, you know, at the time we weren't competing, but in in the deal that we have for advertising, you know, looking back, we really should have put something in there and said we weren't going to bid on the same content rights with one another and compete with one another. So, really interesting there. I don't know quite what to make of it. I haven't looked at the entire filing.

Speaker 2 14:35

This one is particularly long. It's not surprising particularly long. Yeah, I'm sure it is. It's not surprising. But you've got consumers and advertisers alleging Meta's monopoly in social media market. Okay, I mean, do they dominate? Absolutely? Obviously, the word monopoly is very different, yeah. But the other thing that has to be looked at here is you know, think of when Facebook bought Instagram. You know that was reviewed by the DOJ and it was approved. And yet then, years later, people are like well, wait, these guys are too big and they have a monopoly. Well, they were allowed to get that big. So that's something you know. Consumers don't really understand in terms of the laws and how this all works, but this is going to be an interesting one to follow, because I wonder what else is going to come out from what we call discovery, regarding emails and, potentially, other information.

Speaker 3 15:36

Yeah, it's fascinating.

Speaker 3 15:38

Around that time, you know, when Facebook Watch was being, you know, was being built, I, you know, I was involved in a couple conversations that were super interesting, where there were people wanting to build premium video services on top of Facebook as a way to monetize, as so that all of your, you know, your connections basically were an acquisition channel, you know.

Speaker 3 16:11

And so the idea, the idea was that you would build a store, you know, operated on top of Facebook, but then you get access to, you know, their 4 billion users, or, at the time, you know it on top of Facebook but then you get access to you know their 4 billion users, or, at the time, you know, it was slightly smaller, but not much smaller, right, and then it was really interesting because there was like about nine months where there was a flurry of discussions and people wanting to, you know, enter into you know how would this work and what's required, and then it just it just stopped it just, you know now in no way am I drawing any connections to like this, um, because also, just strategically, you know, my view at the time was like, yeah, well, you know, um, why try and bring this premium video experience onto a social network and you know, hey, the concepts are good, but you know, maybe this isn't.

Speaker 3 17:08

You know, but I'm recalling, as you're reading all this, I'm like, huh, that's kind of interesting, because yeah, the whole Facebook, just the content side too.

Speaker 2 17:17

Remember where they were broadcasting baseball games at one point.

Speaker 3 17:19

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 17:20

I forget how far back that goes Exactly. So, mark, I took a look before the podcast just at their stock because it's ridiculous what it's doing now and just sort of some key events. Facebook is a real interesting one, because it's interesting how it seems investors get emotionally with them, although investors get emotional with a lot of stocks. But looking back here in 2019, facebook investors voted in support of proposals to fire Mark Zuckerberg yeah, and their stock was at $177.

Speaker 3 17:52

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 17:53

Right now fast forward to 2020. Yeah, and the pandemic and people staying home, you know shot their stock up just in July of 2020 to $253. Then we jump up during the pandemic, their stock jumps to $376. Yeah, all of a sudden, what happened? Oh, the ad market's no good. No one's buying ads anymore. It's decreasing.

Speaker 2 18:24

So November 4th of 2022, netflix stock was just over $90. That's it. Today it closed at $510. So it's incredible what the stock has done. Just in the last year alone, it's up 141%. In the last five years, it's up 190%. Yeah, so interesting how the changes in the market impact their stock so deeply. It cuts so deep to their stock and we don't see this as much with some of the other companies than we do with Netflix. Oh man, you know, when Netflix had that, you know we lost subs that quarter or whatever it was. We all remember just what that did to Netflix. It was incredible. So Netflix is one of those stocks as well, but there's very few outside of a Netflix or a meta that are really, really like that where we see such a swing. Even with a Disney Some would think even with Disney, you see that.

Speaker 2 19:31

But if you go back to 2020 with Disney. Their stock was at $86. It peaked at $197. Today it's just over 117. It's still not that big of a swing. The difference is the return In the last year. In the last 12 months. Disney's returned just over 17% In the last five years. What do you think, mark, that Disney's returned in five years?

Speaker 2 20:00

I haven't checked, I don't know 1.82 percent, that's it, wow, wow yeah, so interesting to see effectively flat yeah yeah, pretty much, and we haven't seen much change in terms of some of the other companies in the market as well. Yeah, market was doing pretty well this morning on thursday, apr 4th, but it actually closed down over $530. So Netflix was down almost $13. You had a lot of companies down today, so not much change overall in terms of size of market for sorry, market cap for many of these companies out there Market cap.

Speaker 3 20:37

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 20:38

And we'll review that after NEB. We haven't done anything in terms of looking at stocks and companies in quite some time.

Speaker 3 20:45

Well, there's an investor session, I know at the end of, I think, the second day, right At Streaming.

Speaker 2 20:49

Summit. Yeah, towards the end, yeah, yeah, yeah, that'll be a higher level conversation in terms of not so much stock prices, but I think I mean, I'm not the one running it but I think it's really going to be about getting money in today's market interest rates. How do you grow? But that should be interesting. So, mark, final piece there, good, good segue here. We didn't plan this. But talking about raising money, a quick shout out and congratulations to Josh Shaw and the entire team at Allure Security. So they raised a 10 million series A round. I'm not going to go into the details of what they're paying and all that because Josh didn't put that out, so I'll leave that private. But you know it's a testament to what they're doing, because raising money in the business environment today is not easy it is very difficult to do and it's really smart in terms of how much they raised.

Speaker 2 21:45

It gives them enough runway hopefully to get to free cashflow, which is the biggest way to measure success of any company today. Also, they're laser focused on preventing fraud before consumers are impacted and protecting brand identities. So it's it's not really in the in the realm so much of what we cover with video. But for those that may not know, josh Shaw used to be over at Akamai where he was running security on the product side for quite some time, so very well known by people on the Akamai side, which of course ties in ties into media. But great to see them raise a round and I think the right size too. They didn't go out and raise a really large round like some of the other companies have over the last six or seven months that we've seen in the market.

Speaker 2 22:33

Yeah yeah, so great to see. So, mark, that's all we got. Quick time this week Kept us under 30 minutes, which is pretty good, Next week we'll do. Are we doing a podcast next week? I can't even remember. I don't think we are.

Speaker 3 22:47

I think, yeah, I think, let me look it up here?

Speaker 2 22:51

No, okay, so we're not. So this will be the last one that comes out before the NAB Streaming Summit. So for anybody who wants to see the latest program, I did have one speaker swap today. Right, there'll be one or two things when you have 77 speakers, sure Across 40 sessions. But the easy way to get to everything is just go to any B showcom slash streaming, take you to all the programs, the rooms, the lineup.

Speaker 2 23:17

We're in the West hall. We're on the first floor, just to the left side where registration is. Uh, we're in the West Hall. We're on the first floor, just to the left side, where registration is. Two days Monday and Tuesday. The networking event Monday night third floor, outside in the balcony in the West Hall. I'll be running around the session rooms. Won't be on the show floor too much.

Speaker 2 23:35

I have a lot of meetings on the Sunday when we're setting up. I'm still giving out discount codes. I'll have that even the day of. So if you show up last minute and still want to pay less money, come see me, come find me, text me. I'll get you a discount code During the all days of the show that I'm there. Really three days Sunday, monday, tuesday. Someone will have my phone on me on them all times, even when I'm on stage, so I'm always available. You can text me, call me, somebody will make sure that you get what you need on site.

Speaker 2 24:02

Uh, mark, with my shows I am always very hands-on and I believe shows should be bespoke and custom to every user. Yeah, uh, so very important. People need help at any time. I've got the right crew and staff there to help me. Uh, we want to make sure everyone everyone has a good time and meets the people they want to as well. A lot of what I'm Everyone has a good time and meets the people they want to as well. A lot of what I'm doing there and what I call myself is a matchmaker. Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 2 24:27

So who do you want to meet? Who do you need to know in the audience? What companies are you looking to talk to, especially for end user customers? What other types of customers of your size do you want to talk to? Who've already made a change somewhere in their video workflow that you can talk to, that you can get advice from? Happy to make those introductions as well. But in the meantime, anyone has any questions? Reach out to Mark and I. Everything talked about is up on LinkedIn today.

Speaker 2 24:53

We look forward to seeing you at the NEB Streaming Summit. If you're not going to be there, follow me on LinkedIn. We'll be covering all the different sessions, doing a lot of photos. I have a dedicated photographer this year on my team and we will be making all the sessions available for free, like we always do on demand at nabstreamingsummitcom. It takes about a week to get them all up. Thanks to Kaltura, they give us their platform for free and Mobion does all the AV capture but nabstreamingsummitcom. So that's it for this week. Everyone, have a great week next week and we'll talk to you when we're back from NAB.

Speaker 1 25:27

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.