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, back for another week. We've got more data, more news, more numbers for you all. Another busy week, mark.

Speaker 3 0:36

Yes, yes, NFL.

Speaker 2 0:38

Fox IndyCar, as usual, sports.

Speaker 3 0:43

Sports and more sports. So much going on in the sports world.

Speaker 2 0:45

Yeah, a lot of sports, but also some interesting things. We had an acquisition in the market that just came out yesterday. That news was announced.

Speaker 3 0:52

Yeah.

Speaker 2 0:53

Also what we're seeing now with Paramount. So we pretty much know what's going on there. For the most part, some investment news, so that's interesting as well. Some car racing, some some investment news, so that's that's interesting as well. Uh, some car racing, some Apple things that came out during, uh, the developer conference. That's right, let's jump into Mark first with uh, let's see, let's, let's do. The ongoing Sunday ticket trial so for those that aren't aware of the NFL is being sued in Los Angeles court, it's taking place in Los Angeles court and they're being sued over antitrust violations. So it's been pretty fascinating to watch some of the information that's been coming out this week, because the case alleges that the NFL legally inflated the cost of Sunday ticket and requires fans to purchase every available game instead of just per game or per team.

Speaker 3 1:49

Yeah.

Speaker 2 1:51

So what's interesting is there's a couple people who are covering the trial and actually sitting in on it and they're starting to put information out all week just in terms of what's actually taking place. But you have owners of teams that are doing depositions. You have Robert Kraft, the Patriots. You've got executives from the NFL as well. So interesting, just what is coming out, and what's come out this week, is the NFL has publicly from for quite some time that they're all about making their content accessible to everybody. That's that's always been been the case. But now what we've learned is espn proposed a deal the nfl to reduce price of the sunday ticket for the entire 2023 season to $70 and was also going to offer single team packages.

Speaker 3 2:50

Oh, wow.

Speaker 2 2:51

The league. The NFL rejected the proposal.

Speaker 3 2:54

Yeah, no, surprise right. No, no, they didn't want that.

Speaker 2 2:59

Additionally, it was revealed that in 2022, apple made a bid for Sunday Ticket and, based on that, estimated that the NFL could have gotten as many as 20 million new customers, but the league declined Wow. And according to Patriots owner Robert Kraft's deposition, the NFL's goal is to maintain Sunday Ticket as a premium offering as opposed to getting a larger audience. That's weird. Well, you know they think of this as a premium offering. If people are willing to pay for it. We'll make more money with a with a select base, as opposed to a larger base.

Speaker 2 3:38

Yeah, another thing that came out a trial evidence showed that Fox considered Sunday ticket a quote existential threat to its business. So in response to the NFL rejecting a request to reduce the number of Sunday Ticket subscribers, fox wrote that it would have quote. A material change to the distribution of Sunday Ticket is an essential sorry existential. How do you say that word? Existential. There you go. Existential threat to Fox's business Amazing. So Fox's proposal was based on basically the principle that Sunday Ticket would be a can't talk today Mark complimentary premium product rather than a direct competitor. Fascinating, there were also some documents shown the jury that in 2020 and 2021, when Fox was talking to NFL about new 10 year deal, fox requested the NFL that the Sunday ticket package not be priced below $293.96 per season and that the NFL would not allow the audience to grow more than 20% beyond its current level of subscriptions. That is like wow, hey, nfl, you can sell this content, but don't sell it too well, because it's going to impact our business on pay TV.

Speaker 3 5:09

That's right. Yeah, absolutely Wow.

Speaker 2 5:12

Now, the NFL did not agree to any of those specific pricing requests or caps. Yeah, but some of the information that's coming out has been quite interesting to see, and I don't have it in our notes, mark, otherwise I would give them credit, but there is an individual who's sitting in on a lot of this and that's where the information is coming from. They're actually sitting in the trial and creating notes. We should look that up, though, just so we can give them credit. Yeah, but fascinating to see what all's being talked about here, and the fact that this could have been available for $70 is just incredible. $70. Wow, but no way that's that's going to be allowed.

Speaker 3 6:05

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 6:07

So I expect that we're going to see a lot more information like this come out. Uh, it's only. It's only been a week, right, it's not been that long. So we're definitely going to get some more information. I was not able to see who is coming up as far as um in the trial. Who's going to have to testify. I don't know. On that there was somebody who was formerly with Fox, an executive, who was required to sit and talk, so there's some more of those as well coming up.

Speaker 3 6:41

So the individual who appears to be the one reporting, based on what I can find here, is named Edvard Peterson. He is a Los Angeles-based reporter for Courthouse News.

Speaker 2 6:53

Yeah, that's it. Courthouse News yeah.

Speaker 3 6:55

Yep, so he is the one that is. Yeah, and you can see he's publishing quite a lot.

Speaker 2 7:04

Fascinating to see. So we'll keep an eye on that. Definitely one to watch. Next piece of news, mark, is we've got an acquisition in the market. Yes, p firm Clearhaven Partners has acquired IP video transport vendor Zixi Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2 7:20

So there's a couple different headlines for this. I've been told they're all accurate. So some are saying they invested in them. Some are saying they acquired them. Well, they're doing both. They. They acquired the majority share, yeah, but they're also investing, in addition to putting money into the company. Uh, clear haven putting money in. Sure, zixi's executive leadership team is also investing in the transaction. They're not willing to talk about the terms of the deal right now.

Speaker 2 7:51

There's some numbers floating around out there in the size of Zixi. I don't want to put those numbers out until I have accurate ones For those that don't know. Clear Haven they made a significant investment at Wiles and Media in 2021. And they invested more than a million in sunday sky in 2022. Yeah, so they're interesting. I like their focus. I got to spend some time with them at the neb show. I like their core focus on software business. They emphasize data, video and content. Um, their their founder, michelle, was on a panel at the neb show streaming summit, which you can see at neabstreamingsummitcom talking about valuations and comps in the market based on the health of the company, the balance sheet. Yeah, and it was great to hear you know here's. Here's a private equity firm who's looking at deals every day, actually sitting on stage and saying, well, if your balance sheet looks good and you're at least you know even a positive this or that, you know she threw out some variables it's 2.9 times revenue. But if it's not and it's this, you know it's it's 0.9%.

Speaker 2 8:56

She was breaking down how private equity firms like yourselves are valuing video software related companies in the space based on what your balance sheet's doing.

Speaker 3 9:05

Yeah.

Speaker 2 9:06

So super helpful because it was actual numbers as opposed to high level statements. Like you know, good or bad, yeah.

Speaker 3 9:14

Or you know, what I see happen a lot in our space is, you know someone will go look at like SAS company multiples and and come back, oh you know, we should be valued at seven to 10 X, you know, or well, you know, a couple of years ago it was. It was a lot higher than that, but just completely different business models, completely different markets. You can't compare the two. So I think it's it's important to hear from an investor who's investing in video technology companies, companies in our space.

Speaker 2 9:45

Yeah, Agreed, it was a. It was a really great panel. There was a lot of great information. It was that was that was given out, and I love the fact that it was focused on on video and primarily focused on the panel two on software and things tied to data and content which, which I like.

Speaker 2 10:00

So I'll. I'll put some more information on out that out when I can, just in terms of the deal size, uh, but it sounds like that's going to be a little bit of time. Uh, some other news here. Mark quick one here um, sponsor block, which is an add-on that identifies and skips sponsor segments and videos. Just notice that youtube is is trialing, uh, server-side ad insertion. So YouTube is effectively stitching ad segments within videos and serves the entire package to viewers rather than combining them. And guess what? Ad blockers don't work. No, so it was interesting. Sponsor Block noticed this and put up a post on Twitter and just said you know, hey, heads up, this is what's going on now. Don't think that they're thwarting us. We're gonna work around this and it's gonna make our job a little bit harder, but we're still gonna, you know, be able to block the ads with a little bit of development work. I was like, god damn, that's like you're just coming out and calling YouTube out there Like, hey, youtube, we're still going to block you.

Speaker 2 11:09

It's like Holy cow, but interesting. We see more instances where YouTube is really trying to figure out how to prevent ad blocking. So something to keep an eye on there. Uh, we do have some figures here from Showmax. So for those that don't know, show max it's an African streaming media service and it's partially owned by uh, comcast, nbc universal, which owns a 30% stake, and they just did their, their. Uh, I guess it's not quarterly earnings, I don't, I'd have to look at what, how earnings there, but the actual numbers here, so annual revenue. So it sounds like their fiscal quarter obviously is not calendar January to December. Let me get this right.

Speaker 2 12:15

Whatever their last declared annual year is that they define for revenue losses doubled from $65 million to $140.5 million, and that's really because they said they invested $75.7 million. At future growth they had anticipated a loss of $16 million to 216 million. So they did better than what they were expecting, but total revenue was just $54 million. Now maybe it's not fair if I say just 54 million, because this is brand new in the market. It's in a smaller region, so revenue is 54 million.

Speaker 3 12:44

Yeah, what, um? What uh region of Africa do you know that they operate in, or what countries, African countries, do you know?

Speaker 2 12:53

Uh.

Speaker 3 12:54

I'd have to look it up. We have to look it up. I don't.

Speaker 2 12:56

I don't remember offhand. Um, I want to say there was here I'm going to look real quick. I want to say there was 44 countries across sub-Saharan Africa.

Speaker 3 13:09

Okay.

Speaker 2 13:11

There we go. It will no longer be available outside of Africa after December, right, because they decided to focus only in the African market. So 44 countries across sub africa, sub saharan africa.

Speaker 1 13:31

But what I don't know is I don't know enough about, yeah, the saharan africa market to know is 44 countries, a lot I don't know.

Speaker 3 13:35

I know I'm looking at the list here and it's like, okay, I've heard of a lot of these countries, I've been to one of them, but uh okay, so if google's accurate here, they're telling me there are 54 countries in africa today okay so if they're saying they're in 44 of them, and potentially it could be in I don't know how many of those population wise, but obviously they're in a lot yeah interesting.

Speaker 2 14:01

Now let's move toount. So the latest thing that looks like with Paramount. It seems like every week it's like, okay, what's changed?

Speaker 2 14:10

But so it looks like everything's just settled down. Paramount Global will be on its own, as it has been. So a day after Sundance bid for the company officially ended, paramount Global's three CEOs did send a note out to staff notifying employees that the strategic plan they'd outlined at the annual shareholder meeting the week before is still their priority. They said quote work is already underway. So what they're saying is even without being acquired, we have a plan forward. We've heard rumors that it would impact employees as far as layoffs, budget cuts. It's to be expected. To what degree we don't know, but it sounds like it's. It's business as usual in terms of restructuring the business, based on how paramount wants to do it now, with no outside influence. So still to be seen. But if they can put all that behind them, just imagine how much time management team and lawyers and finance and everyone is being consumed with looking at deals, and then they fall through.

Speaker 3 15:14

Yeah, exactly, yeah, it's hard to yeah, it's. It's hard to run a business, much less have any strategic thought about the future of that business, when you're weighed down with, you know and this kind of work is super intensive too you know there's like, there's like real deadlines and there's real you know.

Speaker 2 15:34

Uh, oh, believe me, the team working on this is burning the midnight oil as they say yes, and for deals like this too, just if listeners don't know there's there's enough costs associated to it that most companies have to declare what that cost is in their regulatory filings. Yeah, with this. I haven't looked up what it is, but uh, they've definitely disclosed just what they're spending on this yeah, absolutely yeah.

Speaker 3 15:57

It's a lot of work and it's money.

Speaker 2 15:59

Yeah, it's expensive uh, let's move to netflix mark. So netflix announced on september 2nd they're gonna have a hot dog eating competition between joey chestnut and kobayashi live on netflix. Time is still to be determined. Stream is available globally. Uh, you know, I I think this one's kind of interesting in the sense that here's what I like about this what is the cost to produce this content Exactly? Really, it's two dudes standing at a table eating hot dogs. Your production value can be really good at a very low cost.

Speaker 3 16:36

Yeah, exactly, and you know it's funny. I had a conversation for another podcast thing I was doing and I was interviewing this person I'm going to talk to and the person's actually well-known. I won't say his name, but he's well-known in the space, does a lot of live video events and really high-profile stuff like Coachella, the big music festival, et cetera. Anyway, he one of his reference points about Netflix getting into live was actually this Joey chestnut. He goes and then there's the Joey chestnut, really Like the hot dog eating champion is you know.

Speaker 2 17:16

But I, I, I like this type of content for Netflix because even in their press release they were promoting hey, in the meantime, before this, you can watch these documentaries on, these documentaries on eating and the sport and some other documentaries they've done around. Some of these I think Kobayashi was one that they have a documentary on so they're tying into other content they have. The other thing is you clearly have some sort of international interest here because of where. Kobayashi is from.

Speaker 3 17:43

Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 2 17:45

So I like the fact this isn't content that has a blackout restriction. The cost to produce it should be extremely low. And I also wonder, mark, the Coney Island event takes place, obviously, at Coney Island it's Nathan's event, I should say and it's outdoors and whatnot. You'd have to pull up with a sat truck, yeah, but what if they actually end up having this indoors? Yeah, now the production cost is even lower. It's in a controlled environment, in a studio somewhere, yeah. So the cost to produce is little. I don't know what they're paying. Both of the well, we can't say actors, the eaters, the eaters.

Speaker 3 18:26

I don't know what they're paying the eaters on this. Uh, how do you get paid for being a hot dog eating? I guess sponsorships. Hey, you know, there's probably a bun, there's a. There's a bun, there's a dog man, you're sponsorship.

Speaker 2 18:34

Absolutely, both of both of them have sponsorships. I only billboards, billboards. So, uh, it's, it's gonna be interesting to see. I don't know if we'll get any stats from netflix on this one, but I find the content pretty pretty fascinating. Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure, and just going into this mark, I'm, I'm gonna do something larger around, much larger around. Obviously, netflix and nfl on christmas.

Speaker 2 19:03

But when we're talking about live events, you know I've been looking up a lot of stats recently around Christmas NFL and you know we're talking about the type of traffic you know hot dog eating is going to get really who knows. But on the NFL side, you know, in 2023, the Raiders and Kansas city chiefs drew an average audience of more than 29 million viewers on CBS on Christmas. That was the most watched Christmas Day game in 34 years. The Giants-Eagle game was 29 million. Now, in 2022, the Broncos-Rams game was 22.57 million and Bucks and Cardinals okay, not the greatest team, sorry Was 17.1 million, but the average across all games on Christmas was 20.4. Now, in 2021, the Browns and Packers delivered a 28.59 million number across Fox and NFL network. Now to throw another piece of information out there that listeners should know Mark, what is the biggest day of the year for Netflix, well, christmas I, I, I was gonna guess christmas, but I didn't.

Speaker 3 20:14

I didn't know that. Wow, yeah, christmas. Yeah, it just all makes sense, though I how many homes you know, um, first of all, family. Most of stores are shut down, right, so, you know, unless you live in an area where you know I don't know, you go for a drive or something, um, or you're traveling you know to or from family or Christmas event, what are you doing? You're sitting at home, right, and after you eat, and after you've talked to your uncles and your cousins and nieces and nephews and mom and dad for three hours, what are you going to do?

Speaker 2 20:49

Sit down and turn on the TV, right, yeah. But here's the thing, though. Keep in mind, this is a one o'clock game, so it's 10 o'clock in the, on the West coast, 10 o'clock in the morning. You're still opening up presents for people celebrating Christmas. You're still eating.

Speaker 1 21:06

You're still at church, I don't know so many people now are are opening presents on like Christmas Eve.

Speaker 3 21:10

I know so many households. Yeah, I, when I was younger, I had to fight my parents on that one. Come on, let's do Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve Nope, we're doing it on Christmas.

Speaker 2 21:19

It's going to be really, really interesting to see what Netflix pulls here. Because you also have the international audience, which will not be large, but anyone traveling, anyone who moved overseas.

Speaker 3 21:30

Oh yeah, Expats.

Speaker 2 21:31

Yeah, expats Right now has access to it. Now, the moment you start talking about the second game later in the day, what is it? 4, 4.30, okay, now you're talking 9.30, 10 o'clock in a lot of locations in Europe.

Speaker 3 21:44

Yeah.

Speaker 2 21:45

So you're going to lose some of that audience. But I didn't realize, Mark, how big the NFL is on Christmas. Over the last three years it dominates.

Speaker 3 21:53

Yeah, thanks for sharing those numbers. I didn't know them either. I'm not surprised, but I didn't know.

Speaker 2 21:59

I was, I was, I just thought because of the time, the holiday and people with family and whatnot, so I'm I'm working on a very detailed postmark for the blog that we'll go up with. Here's all the numbers. Here's what you know, just what we should look at. We've never had a streaming NFL on Christmas without blackout restrictions, so we don't truly have any data to compare it to Netflix, but we've got to start with what broadcast is and over the air. But yeah, that's how big the numbers are this could be big, this could be big.

Speaker 2 22:28

Yeah, I expect this to certainly be much larger than the NFL wildcard game on Peacock.

Speaker 3 22:32

Yeah.

Speaker 2 22:34

By far. I think the games combined will be in the top 10 of the largest live events on the internet. For sure, it's not going to hit cricket, which is up to what? 60 plus now.

Speaker 3 22:48

Yeah.

Speaker 2 22:48

On an average minute audience AMA method, but we're definitely going to get stats from Netflix. There's no way that Netflix and NFL are not going to put something out after. Whether or not we get it from hot dog eating yet, I just don't know, but something to keep an eye on. Let's go into some content deals here. Fox has announced a new content deal with IndyCar, so they're going to broadcast every 2025 race on Fox and make it available on the Fox sports app. Every 2025 race on Fox and make it available on the Fox Sports app.

Speaker 2 23:20

Nbc held the rights to IndyCar since 2009. That all said, I looked up some numbers here, mark. Indycar is a great brand and I think a lot of people have heard of IndyCar. Yeah, of course, but it doesn't have a lot of viewership. So I dug around and I found that earlier in the season this year, when NBC moved the race at Long Beach to the USA Network, it resulted in just over 300,000 viewers Really, that's it. And in 2023, the race had just over 1 million viewers, so viewership is not that big. Indycar does now become the only premier motorsport in the US with exclusive major broadcast network coverage for all of its races, so maybe this is a case of they're having to build up viewership because not all the races have been available on a major broadcast network. I don't know enough about the racing audience.

Speaker 1 24:19

Yeah. But yeah, the numbers aren't that big.

Speaker 2 24:24

Yeah, I thought wow, that's kind of slow. Now let's go to more racing here.

Speaker 3 24:27

Formula One let's talk about numbers.

Speaker 2 24:31

Yeah, formula One AWS Canadian Grand Prix, which aired live on CBS, had its largest television audience on record, with an average of 1.8 million viewers. Audience peaked at 1.97 million. So just the racing audience for broadcast TV is not that large. Now, the miami grand prix in early may set the all-time f1 record. Yeah, for live broadcast, and it was 3.1 million average viewers.

Speaker 3 25:04

That's it so interesting that racing has really good brands, I'm sure a lot of people have heard of f1, even if they're not racing fans.

Speaker 2 25:12

Yeah, but a lot of people are not watching it. Interesting Another acquisition in the market on the ad tech side. So CTV focused DSP Madhive announced its acquisition of Frequence. So Frequence is an omni-channel marketing platform I know that's a high level sort of generic term everyone's using channel marketing platform. I know that's a high level sort of generic term everyone's using. But basically what this is is you know, Mad Hive helps broadcasters sell connected TV inventory specifically to local advertisers. Uh, programmatic technology is really what they're focusing on here. So now, by having Frequence in the mix with their technology, it enables them to use first-party data for targeting via MadHive's DSP. So interesting, I think, tie up here.

Speaker 2 26:02

There was nothing announced in terms of the deal size. That said, MadHive received 300 million investment from Goldman Sachs last year. The company had revenue of about 125 million in 2022. These are public numbers, according to the CEO, so it's not a guess. Uh, Frequence has roughly 350 employees, so this is going to bring Mad Hive's total headcount to almost 600. So it's it's doubling the size of the company from a headcount standpoint. Uh, but no terms of the deals were announced there. Would love to know how, how they valued that. You know, ad tech acquisitions, Mark, remember 18, 20 months ago during COVID? Right, you saw multiples that were seven, eight, maybe as high as nine times revenue, which was ridiculous. Yeah, We've seen that cool off quite a bit, quite a bit yeah.

Speaker 2 26:52

But to what degree here, just don't know. Yeah, a couple other things here. So during apple's developer event, the company announced a new feature called insight. So for those that don't know what amazon x-ray is, it's, it's like that with overlays you can see who the actor is. It provides additional information. Amazon also links out to IMDb. In this case it's going to be available in sight. It's Apple's tech.

Speaker 2 27:21

It's going to be available for their own original content. It'll also link out to what song is playing during that particular piece of video. It'll be available on the TV app on tvOS Later in the year also just TV app iPhone, ipad.

Speaker 3 27:38

So that's all coming later in the year. That X-ray feature I really love and it's one of the things I miss or I wish would go to Netflix. I wish that they would build.

Speaker 2 27:49

Yeah, the Amazon one works really well, when I first saw it years ago at the Streaming Summit I was. I was like wow. It's simple.

Speaker 3 27:58

It's easy to navigate it gives you the information you want, it's quick mdb, um, for amazon, because of course they own it, you know. But a lot of times the images are, you know, either really old or they're of the actors and the actresses, and you know the personalities on on screen.

Speaker 3 28:23

So yeah, interesting yeah, sometimes, you know, I've clicked in, I've kind of been like, wow, there's some huge get. You know, especially even with some, some super A-list, incredibly famous people. I've seen gaps that are shocking, but still, it's cool, it's very cool. It's something I love Netflix, ui, netflix experience but it's the one thing that I wish that they would bring to the screen. Not that I use it a lot, but, you know, like my wife and I last night actually it was funny we're watching, watching something, um, uh, what was it? White collar? And this, um, this, uh, you know, scene comes on, I go, oh, I know, that's the, you know the woman who was in this other, and so we're like arguing over it and and I wish there was x-ray because, you know, because then so instead we had to like pause it and get out yeah exactly.

Speaker 3 29:18

Yeah, turns out. Turns out she was right. I was wrong, but I was convinced that it was the same actress.

Speaker 2 29:24

But that is a good example of where just that little bit of information is helpful while you're watching yeah, and the fact you have to stop the experience to go find it. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 29:34

yeah, she had to get up off the couch go get her phone because her phone was closer than mine, so that's a lot of work Exactly Well, yeah, we were arguing over it.

Speaker 2 29:42

So you know we had to set this one. I think there's a separate podcast for that.

Speaker 3 29:47

Yeah, yeah, relationship podcast. I don't know.

Speaker 2 29:57

Relationship counseling. But I agree when when I've used it on on Amazon, it's it's worked really well and also it's just fascinating how they did it. They came to the streaming show a couple of years ago and showcased it and yeah, it's been out for the person One of the people on that specific team and talked and did a technical presentation of how they implemented it to this day. It's still one of the best ever attended sessions we've had. Wow, yeah, that's how that's how good the presentation was another thing from apple.

Speaker 2 30:21

Uh, they announced a hat tip to edgio. First one to point out this news on linkedin I. I did not see this and nobody else I saw picked it up, but the apple player now supports cmcd. Yeah, that's right, it's supported, but people are saying it's not supported the way they wish Apple was doing it.

Speaker 2 30:55

But, it's a start. The standard does allow three different modes for transmitting the data, but the Apple Video Player only uses the preferred method, so sounds like there is some limitation there that some people in the industry are saying is not ideal, but you know, not, yeah, um, somebody's always going to want more, but maybe it's a start.

Speaker 2 31:18

Uh. Going back to some ad stuff, mark, we missed that. Uh, roku announced something they're calling the roku exchange. So it's a series of ad technology enhancements on their platform and it just enables dsp partners to access premium ad inventory. So now enabling programmatic ad buys with identity identity data, they're saying, ai driven optimization capabilities. Uh, they called out four specific uh features of the technology. Didn't give out much, much more information on that Uh, but people can check that out online. If you go to roku's news website they have a breakdown, detail, just sort of everything that it includes. That was another piece of ad tech uh news this week. Uh, let's go to venue sports, mark. Yeah, so for those that don't know, a lot probably do. But in april, uh, two house representatives wrote to Disney, fox and WBD about venue sports business asking for some specific details, and last week they followed up with another letter to venue sports. They called their response quote insufficient.

Speaker 3 32:28

Because this is the most important thing for you know, House committee, committee members to be working for many of them it probably is probably okay, we won't get political on this, on this podcast, but we don't want to go into that, that's right now they did say they acknowledge that venue sports was very quick to reply to letter.

Speaker 2 32:50

they offered to meet them and and staff, but they still found the responses lacking. So what they're asking for is the following. I'm going to read paragraph here. This is directly from the letter, so quote overall, we have still not received answers about the firewalls your companies may implement to prevent collusion, the precautions you may take to ensure consumer privacy or the methods you may use to determine pricing of the new service. Some of the vague assurances you have provided strike us as contradictory. For example, we find it difficult to understand how your companies can both promise not to share competitively sensitive information and also evaluate the success of the joint venture on a company-by-company basis. Your repeated assertion that the details of the joint venture have not yet been finalized is also hard to believe, given that the joint venture is projected to roll out in mere months.

Speaker 3 33:51

Well, now that last one I agree with. I think the same, so wonder the same.

Speaker 2 33:56

It's an interesting point because what what these house representatives are saying is giving us, give us more information, but it sounds like not even all the information is yet in writing, contractually, of who's sharing what with whom, how, what, what are the guidelines here? Uh, you know, there does have to be some sort of how do we put rails on this, especially from a legal standpoint too, which you know I don't know what the legal ramifications are. Uh, in their letter, venue sports also makes it very clear, you know, they specifically call out we're aware of certain, you know, laws that we have to abide to. We plan to abide by them, of course. They've made it very clear that they're not trying to get into any troubles legally, yeah, of course, but another letter, yeah, so we'll see what, if anything, comes of that.

Speaker 2 34:49

A couple other pieces of information. Wbd closed a 10-year deal to be the new home of the french open in the us, beginning next year. You know it's being reported it's 650 million dollars in total. Tnt sports already owns the european rights to the french open. Yeah, uh, in the us, nbc has been the longtime home of the open, which it currently shares the tennis channel. So interesting to see, mark, how many sports are jumping between nbcu yes, exactly bd.

Speaker 2 35:20

Uh, who else we got amazon? There's three or four. Uh well, also fox, I mean we, we talked about just the car, so the traditional four players, three broadcast players, yeah, uh, fourth player really with amazon.

Speaker 3 35:35

Uh, seem to really just be trading sports as of late, exactly, and then you got roku, sports cards, player cards, it's.

Speaker 2 35:42

It's been a lot yeah, and, of course, fans are gonna have to at some point keep track of this as well, which is the hard part. Uh, google announced new advertising network from google tv. So what I liked here is they gave out some numbers. So they're offering targeted in-stream video inventory across. What they're saying is more than 125 channels into Google, built into Google TV, and they say reaching more than 20 million monthly active Google TV and other Android TV OS devices. Wow, and I reread that and I was like, wait a minute. So they're not even talking viewers or users or monthly active users. They're talking devices and you're reaching reaching more than 20 million monthly active devices, but define active.

Speaker 1 36:32

I don't know.

Speaker 2 36:33

Yeah, so hard to know exactly what the audience size is. Google did say, though viewers of Google's TV Google TV's free channels spend over 75 minutes daily watching videos. Now, what I like there is we rarely get any information from these platforms on what the average viewing time is on a daily or monthly basis. So at least we know 75 minutes daily. Initially, google CTV ad formats are only going to include non-skippable and six-second bumper ads, but they say more ad formats are planned in the future. But for anyone who's just thinking of that number 20 million it's not monthly active users, it's monthly active devices, and that can change a lot in terms of usage. Another piece here of NBCUniversal news Roger Communications announced a multi-year deal with NBCU and WBD, so they're going to bring some of their channels to Canadians starting September of this year. Bravo Channel will be in Canada in January 2025. Rogers is also going to be the home of WBD's suite of English language brands, including HGTV, the Food Network, among other content. So expansion there to Canadians, that's good. It's not a super large audience in Canada, specifically in Rogers either, but I think it's still good for consumers, giving them more content. Licensing terms are not disclosed in that one, so unfortunately, we got very little information this week as far as actual cost of content. That's probably too surprising.

Speaker 2 38:17

Another piece of news here, mark, is not exactly streaming related, but it ties to disney. So disney's years-long dispute with florida governor ronda sandis is over, so they've come to a development agreement. It was approved wednesday night. Disney promises to invest up to 17 billion in its florida resort over the next 10 to 20 years and has set up a framework for theme park expansions. Um, working with with florida. So that's, that's now past disney, which I think is good. Yeah, because disney's, you know, between what we had with pelts, between what you had with thets, between what you had with the park, yeah, and then you had the issue with Florida. You know you got the woke stuff that they're doing.

Speaker 2 39:04

Disney's been going through just quite a lot in terms of challenges. So having some of this past them, I think, is good for them. Yeah, so that they can get back to focusing on content, product innovation, and along that lines, they they did announce that they're going to add two new ad products across streaming portfolio and they're falling into two broad buckets. So one is called Adver games and shoppable ads. Yeah, I don't really get the Adver games quiz show and beat the block are going to launch on Hulu and ESPN, but I'm not going on Hulu or espn to play games yeah I don't get it.

Speaker 3 39:43

Yeah, I don't get that one either. The shoppable ads I I do get, even though, um, you know, that's been an ad format, or at least a concept that's been around for a long time, because it it's been huge in asia, uh, for many years yeah, but different audience.

Speaker 2 40:03

We've been talking about ad stuff for 20 years in our space hot spots. I remember this technology mark back in 1999 we were doing stuff with bcbg and it was fashion runway shows and it was like hey, what's that dress she's wearing? Click on it, you can buy it. You can buy jennifer, an was like.

Speaker 3 40:18

Hey, what's that dress she's wearing? Click on it, you can buy it. You can buy Jennifer Aniston's sweater. That was always the example.

Speaker 2 40:22

That's right, and yet it's just not gone anywhere in the US.

Speaker 3 40:26

Yeah.

Speaker 2 40:26

Yeah, yeah. So I want to actually see adoption before. I think it has any chance.

Speaker 3 40:33

Super interesting because you know, and I don't know if it's really still a thing, but is, like the home shopping network, still a thing? Is it even out there on broadcast television?

Speaker 2 40:44

Oh yeah, it's still there. Oh yeah, there's multiple ones.

Speaker 3 40:46

Yeah, exactly, and so you know, like people kind of laugh and make jokes, right, but I think, like we all know somebody, probably even somebody in our household, who at some point has bought something on one of those. You know like, like people do enjoy, or you know they I don't know they participate in that experience and why, why it hasn't expanded. You know I, I don't, I don't know. It's interesting.

Speaker 2 41:15

Well, I think part of it is demographic Right. So home shopping network, yeah, if you look at some of the stats that we've seen, seem out there, the largest group of visitors from an age standpoint are 55 to 64-year-olds.

Speaker 3 41:34

Interesting. I would have actually thought it was like 70 to 84-year-olds.

Speaker 2 41:38

Honestly, I would too. I thought I would have actually thought it was like 70 to 84 year olds. Honestly, I would too. I thought I was much older as well and HSN. Depending what numbers you look at here, it's anywhere between 76% to 83% are female, that doesn't surprise me.

Speaker 2 41:54

Right, you have a very specific type of shopper on all of these stations, also buying very specific types of products. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, the moment you go to, let's insert a shoppable ad inside a stream, yeah, okay, how comfortable is an older audience interacting with that ad? Yeah, that's true, I don't think very comfortable and the younger generation doesn't even think of, well, I'm going to buy something through a video. It's totally different. Like you're to your point, mark, and in APAC and you're talking TikTok, right, and the way they do all that commerce stuff. It's a very different audience.

Speaker 3 42:27

Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 2 42:29

So I just I don't think the demographic right now is a great fit for what companies are trying. But remember, we heard with roku. It was like okay, roku and walmart, that's right the fact that they used an example of well, now you could buy paper towels during a live show. What do you not know? Your audience who's? Doing that yeah I've never had anyone be like man. I'm really gonna get some paper towels during this show. Oh, that reminds me toilet paper it just doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 2 42:57

So I think the problem is we haven't really yet seen content and products that have melded well together, where the experience is something consumers actually want to do.

Speaker 3 43:07

You know we, you know we could really take this off on a rabbit trail, which we won't do. But so many marketers and strategists who are, you know, the ones who are coming up with, you know, all these use cases, I feel, are just disconnected from the consumer. Many are and there's a handful of creatives amongst that group where you could very easily, you know, with enough cups of coffee and whiteboards come up with these amazing ideas that everyone in that room is just convinced is going to be the latest disruption. Everybody's going to love it. Nobody stops to say wait a second. Would I use this?

Speaker 3 43:53

Would, anyone in my household use this. Hey, should we go talk to some consumers? Should we actually go understand the market? You know so. Then they run out there, they build the plans, they start building the technology, and then it basically bombs. And then they go repeat it again.

Speaker 2 44:09

They find some other idea and it just I didn't cover this, but I'll bring it up, since you bring up this point. Agree, 100%, and one of the things I posted this week was just an advertising campaign by Tubi.

Speaker 3 44:21

Yeah.

Speaker 2 44:22

So Tubi rolled out this new they're calling it a more popular ad campaign. So they're comparing the reach of their platform, using a monthly average user's metric, to the number of people who live in France. So it's 68 million people live in france, 75 million watch to be. Now, what I don't get here is the reason consumers go to streaming services is the depth and breadth of content or original content or the fact to be yes, but their campaign is 36 million Americans play pickleball, okay.

Speaker 3 45:02

I saw that one 75 million watch Tubi.

Speaker 2 45:05

So why aren't you relating your campaign to the content, the original content, no subscription required? I mean, nobody picks a service based on monthly active users and they certainly don't say well, I'm looking for something to watch. Oh, it has more viewers than the country of France has residents Like, oh, that must be a great platform, I don't get it. Now I thought it was interesting, mark. When they announced this campaign, the CMO of Tubi said the campaign was driven by the fact quote advertisers still see us as a challenger brand and that numbers don't mean much without context. So he made the size of our audience feel tangible by comparing our viewership to dozens of common things. Now I think that is smart when you're talking to advertisers.

Speaker 3 45:57

Yeah, yeah, but you're talking to advertisers.

Speaker 2 45:58

Yeah, yeah, but you're running these campaigns on yahoocom billboards all over the cities, like that's not really targeting advertisers. Yes, obviously we're all. All advertisers are consumers, so they're going to see some of this as well. But then also, why not put it in context of something we can understand, since we don't know what a monthly active user is? Yeah, yeah, that's just very odd to me. And then, just tying into Tubi, yesterday the CEO said on LinkedIn, based on this latest data from Nielsen, tub know, tubi's, you know, viewed more now than Disney Plus. And I was like, well, that's what somebody from the LA Times you know, wrote about the numbers and I was like well wait a minute.

Speaker 2 46:46

You're comparing Disney Plus with Hatch subscriptions to Tubi, which is completely free. Yeah, like one has nothing to do with the other, and one is generating billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars in revenue and another one's not even at a billion. So to your point you started with yes, I think there's a huge disconnect between a lot of products and services in the space tied to video, especially when it comes to vendors, in terms of not just consumers. Let's talk right.

Speaker 2 47:17

Actual broadcast content, sports publishing, you name it, yeah. Yeah, when it comes to vendors, in terms of not just consumers, let's talk right. Actual broadcast content, sports publishing, you name it, yeah yeah it's just they don't sync up.

Speaker 3 47:24

Yeah, yeah, they just, they just don't sync up and it's and I see this over and over and over again with marketers where, you know, um, because I, you know, I get approached somewhat frequently. Hey, you know, I'd like to talk to you. You know, we think our marketing could be better, get some ideas. You know I get approached somewhat frequently. Hey, you know, I'd like to talk to you. You know, we think our marketing could be better, get some ideas. You know, these are usually founders, ceos, and it's interesting, oftentimes they're approaching, expecting me, even maybe wanting me In some cases. They want me to say oh yeah, you need to replace your CMO, your head of marketing, your, you know, whatever, because you know they're not good. Almost always that's not the case.

Speaker 3 48:00

Many, many, many times I come in and my assessment is you know, they're actually doing, quote unquote by the textbook, all the right things they're executing well, but here's the problem they don't know the market, they have no idea who the buyer is. So now, if they're incapable of closing that gap, well, yeah, you probably need a new marketing team. But you know I have. Has anybody worked with them? Are they out traveling with the sales team? Are they, you know, and when teams make that adjustment and they get out there and know the market, all of a sudden those activities get into alignment with what a buyer actually cares about, how they actually think, and what do you know, marketing starts to work again. But I just see it, oh, I see it so many times where marketers just simply do not, or they claim they do, because they had one conversation or they had a very limited, you know, carefully controlled set of conversations. And you know, and and it was wrong, it's not the whole market, it's not representative, you know.

Speaker 2 49:03

Yeah, yeah, I mean that's. That's not surprising. No markets were talking about this. I see the Tubi's now put out a press release today. Oh, really Okay.

Speaker 2 49:10

Uh it looks like a press release. Uh, it came up as a press release in Company News, so no. So Tubi is pushing out the fact that somebody wrote about that last month Tubi had his most watched month ever, in May, with an average of 1 million viewers. That's more than Disney Plus had, since they had 969,000. So I don't understand what that means, right? Disney Plus has over 100 million subs.

Speaker 2 49:40

Yeah, so what's the average of 1 million viewers? I don't know. Youtube is the only ad-free supported platform with more viewers than Tubi. Oh, because now you're calling ad-free. So it sounds like what they're saying is Disney Plus only has a certain amount of no, because Disney Plus does have an ad-only service we don't know how many users AVOD service. We don't know how many users are doing this, but Tubi is completely free. So it just makes no sense. And here's something they're highlighting, right, I don't, I don't get it.

Speaker 2 50:21

But yeah, we could go on all day about the disconnect. You know I'll take, I'll take you with last one mark, last last story, but I'll take you one better, okay, no friends, no friends. To brightcove now, because this isn't current brightcove employees management team nobody. But before brightcove went public, which cats could be over 10 years? They came and said, dan, we need a report for our S-1 filing when we do our IPO, on the size of the OVP market we're in and what is the opportunity moving forward. You know we want to pay you to do this, oh, okay, but we want to have some indication, like first, like what are you thinking? The market size is yeah, and at the time I was putting it around a 350 to 400 million dollar number. Yeah, uh, and keep in mind this has got to be.

Speaker 2 51:04

It's got to be 10 years ago, oh sure, um, bright cove, did ipo? When see what google tells us here wow, 2012, yeah, so 12 years ago, uh. And so I gave them my number, uh. And then they came back and they're like thanks, we're actually going to use a different firm. Then you read their S1 billion yeah, yeah, right.

Speaker 2 51:38

And yet at the time their revenue at the time was what was it? $50, $60 million for the year, yeah, and so I thought that was real interesting. You're going to set expectations that are wrong in the market on purpose, just to create excitement, and that's very similar with products, yeah.

Speaker 3 51:56

Yeah.

Speaker 2 51:56

It's very similar to the way some vendors don't start with the customer and how they want to buy a product. They say well, we want them to buy it and package it. This way, You're not listening to the customer. So, whether it's a consumer, whether it's B2B, B2C, whether it's Wall Street private equity, if you don't set the right expectations and you don't know what they want, you're going to have a problem.

Speaker 3 52:15

Yeah, exactly, and numbers are just used so inappropriately.

Speaker 2 52:23

Yeah, we see that every day.

Speaker 3 52:25

It's just every day, Just yeah.

Speaker 2 52:29

Every day. So that's all we got, Mark. We've got some more numbers here on. Nfl Stanley Cup and some other things but we'll cover some of that. Next week, nothing, uh, earth shattering here a couple million uh mark. Final thing I am going to record a um podcast only just on the cdm market coming up.

Speaker 3 52:48

That's right, I put that on linkedin yesterday.

Speaker 2 52:50

There's so much nonsense I need to debunk about people putting out some numbers that are just so far off from reality, especially when we have the largest CDNs out there giving us public revenue numbers. This isn't complicated, but I'm going to go through some technology trends, what I'm seeing in pricing. I'm going to talk about all the latest CDN pricing data I've collected in Q1 of this year. Going to talk about competitive landscape I'm going to break down, vendor by vendor by vendor, what they're doing in the market or not doing. We're going to talk about competitive landscape. I'm going to break down, vendor by vendor by vendor, what they're doing in the market or not doing. We're going to talk about some technology trends of what I'm seeing inside telcos, carriers, isps.

Speaker 2 53:26

I'm also going to give out a list of the largest cdn contracts in the world, companies and their names. Going to talk tiktok and what they're doing. Amazing, there's a lot going on in the uh on the. So the reason I mentioned that is the reason I posted on LinkedIn. It was to give everyone a level playing field. So you know, sometimes I record something and a vendor says hey, I didn't know you were doing it.

Speaker 2 53:47

Exactly. How come you didn't mention me? Yeah, all right. Well, here's a heads up to all vendors. There's news you want me to highlight or something interesting you're seeing in the market? You know CDN 77 gave me some interesting information on 4K adoption across their network, some of the others around bit rates, cdns and what they're seeing. So if you're a CDN, you're tied to the CDN market. You want to get some exposure in the podcast? Reach out to me.

Speaker 3 54:13

On or off?

Speaker 2 54:13

the record is fine. I'm looking for numbers, not like. My revenue grew 100% last year. Nobody knows what that means, but that's going to be coming up at the end of the month. Cool yeah.

Speaker 3 54:25

Yeah, dan, I actually forwarded that on to somebody who I just knew you probably were already talking to or reached out to. But they're like, oh thanks, yep, dan already called us.

Speaker 2 54:36

So I'm like, okay, well, yeah, oh, thanks, yep, dan already called us, so I'm like okay, well, yeah, I'm fortunate I talked to every single CDN vendor out there on a regular basis outside of one or two, uh, but also I've been talking to a lot of customers.

Speaker 2 54:47

Many have recently repriced their contracts. We've got some of the larger Microsoft's and others of the world that do software downloads, which falls under what I'll be talking about as well. So it should be an interesting podcast, interesting topic. I'm sure I'll get a lot of feedback and some people disagreeing, which is fine, but I want to make sure the numbers are very clear. I've seen some recent reports of the size of the market and it's off by a factor of six or seven. Wow, okay.

Speaker 1 55:13

Yeah.

Speaker 2 55:14

So more to come on that. That's it for this week. We appreciate everyone listening. If you have any questions, let us know. Every single thing we talked about today, mark, I've put up on LinkedIn, so all the numbers are up. But if you have any questions, reach out to Mark and I anytime. We appreciate everyone coming back every week. I haven't looked at the numbers lately, mark, but we're over 50,000. Yeah, in terms of downloads, which is great. It grows Every week. We just get a little bit more organically, which is great. But any questions, let us know Everyone. Have a great week, stay safe and we'll talk to you next. Podcast. Thanks very much.

Speaker 1 55:47

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.