Speaker 2 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 1 0:22

Welcome to the Dan Rayburn podcast. I'm Dan Rayburn, recording Friday, january 10th. I'm going solo today. Mark is busy for a couple days, isn't able to record. He'll be back on next week and boy, what a week it's been. What a week it's been Start of the new year, really for most folks.

Speaker 1 0:42

On Monday I wondered just how quiet or busy it would be. Well, it's been extremely busy, obviously for anyone who's been watching what's going on this week. Monday we had the kickoff of the whole Disney Fubo deal, which I'll talk about in detail today, but we also had that night Netflix's live stream of Raw for WWE. That was their first WWE event and then you had the venue sports not launching news coming out today, on Friday, january 10th. In addition to that, we had a whole bunch of numbers from Netflix, not only for Raw but for the full global viewership of NFL streaming on Christmas, which came out on the 31st. Nbc Sports released a whole bunch of data around Peacock, around NFL as well. So there's a lot to cover today.

Speaker 1 1:31

Instead of trying to cover everything, because frankly I think it's just too much, I'm going to cover some of the most important pieces of news and try and drill down into detail in those. Also, for all those who've reached out this week, I'm still a little bit behind. I have over 250 LinkedIn requests still to get to people asking to connect. For those wondering yes, I do go through every single one individually in terms of does it make sense to connect to the person, are they in my industry? How might I be able to help them? What can I learn from them? What is their background? So those take time for me to go through.

Speaker 1 2:09

I've gotten through all the media requests this week so those are all done, so I'll go through. Let's just start with the venue sports not launching. A couple of things to just note here for listeners some things I don't know and nobody knows in terms of what's going to happen between Fubo Disney deal venue sports. Some of this that we're seeing in the market that people are reporting is complete speculation on their part. It's not factual. I'll get into what some of those things are In other instances. When it comes to some of the background details here, I am under NDA with some of the companies involved in some of the news from today.

Speaker 2 2:51

And.

Speaker 1 2:51

I can't talk to certain aspects of deals Now why would I be under NDA With certain companies? Being under NDA enables me to see some of their products in a different light. I get more detailed information. Sometimes I get to see the products in person before they come out for different streaming services or new versions that are going to come out. That also applies sometimes to hardware vendors on the TV side. So I do get some information there. But whether it's under NDA or it's just with a relationship and trust, I can't always talk about it. That's the reality of the business I'm in.

Speaker 1 3:29

So let's go into the news that Venue Sports won't launch. So what Disney, fox and WBD pushed out today was just a quick statement saying, quote after careful consideration, we've collectively agreed to discontinue the Venue Sports joint venture and not launch the streaming service. I wasn't too surprised when this came out because of the Disney Fubo note news on Monday to, from a licensing standpoint, allow certain operators, both on the TV and streaming side, create now smaller bundles with their sports content, skinnier bundles. And that's really where Venue was sitting in the middle of a segment of the market where it wasn't a full linear lineup. That's really where Venue was going to fit the best, I think. And now that's not as much needed really, in addition to ESPN that plans to launch its flagship ESPN product later in the year. So from a positive or negative standpoint, I do think it's negative in the sense that there was a couple hundred people who would have been hired for venue sports, which now won't be hired because the product isn't coming to the market. So that is unfortunate. It's very disappointing. You know just certain individuals who were hoping to get jobs there or whatnot. So we'll see how some of that might shake out, with some of the other content owners maybe being able to pick up some of those people. I just don't know. But so that's to me that's the disappointing part. I think more choice in the market is great for consumers in terms of another sports offering. That said, I don't think we need another in the market. No-transcript, it's a lot of confusion in the market when it comes to a branding go to market standpoint, so I don't think that's a negative for consumers.

Speaker 1 5:51

A couple other things to highlight here. Fubo's lawsuit against Disney, fox and WBD was over antitrust practices, so I've seen a couple people mention well, man, if Disney and the others made this decision to shut down venue sports a week ago, they wouldn't have had to pay Fubo the $220 million. But one really has nothing to do with the other. Even if they had shut that down a week ago, the lawsuit still would be proceeding because it's over antitrust practices. So shutting it down earlier would not have removed the terms they came up with for payment.

Speaker 1 6:27

Everybody's asking okay, how did this also tie into DirecTV and Dish, who were talking about they still don't think this is a good deal in the market going away? I've seen some people say that they're threatening to sue. Well, they didn't threaten to sue, they simply said they could. But as of now that's just a potential. So every single time there's a suit like this inside any business there's always a risk versus reward scenario. Would you rather risk an extended lawsuit that could jeopardize, maybe, bundling in general with content, or is it easier just to no longer have to deal with the suit? And that's a decision that companies make based on what they think is best short and long-term for the company.

Speaker 1 7:15

I don't know how the JV of Disney, fox and WBD decided on that. I have no insight to that so I'm not going to speculate. I do wonder again, don't know, with the venue service not coming to the market. Does that change how quickly the Fubo Disney deal closes? Because what they said on Monday was they expected that to take 12 to 18 months to close. That seems like an extremely long time of the two companies working together to close that deal. And if you compare that to just the Paramount Skydance deal, which is much, much, much larger, their timeline wasn't even that long. So I don't know why the timeline was that long. I don't know if Venue not launching in the market and shutting down changes that timeline, but that's something we'll have to watch. The $220 million that Disney, fox and WBD are paying to end the lawsuit was not contingent on Venue launching.

Speaker 1 8:25

Also, if you look at the numbers here, fubo did need some cash. At the end of Q3 of 2023, fubo had $152.3 million in cash and cash equivalents restricted cash and their net loss that quarter was $54.7 million. Now their net loss was down from 84 million year over year, but Fubo is still losing money every quarter, and a good amount of it. So getting the cash from Disney certainly helps and WBD and Fox certainly helps quite a bit. So that's good, certainly for their balance sheet.

Speaker 1 9:04

I think the key takeaway here is we're going to continue to see more ways for companies to figure out where their services actually aligned in the market and how they want to split these out, and there's going to be some more news coming out just in the next few weeks of deals that are already done, and we'll cover that in the podcast coming up. But in addition to that, what we have to watch are what is going to happen with these linear networks that Disney, wbd and others are spinning out, because if, all of a sudden, some of those linear networks are picked up by others in the market or by private equity, whoever it may be some of that content then, especially the live content, might disappear from some of these streaming services. So I think streaming services that are offering live content are going to look very different a year from now as these companies split out their businesses into linear assets and streaming assets. Which means who's going to be the loser in that deal? Well, consumers, of course, because they're going to wonder why is content that I was always getting as part of my fee every month to whomever? Why is that now gone in my bundle? Why am I no longer getting that? Or I can now get it, but I have to pay more over here to another provider to get it. So it's going to get confusing for consumers, even more so than it is today, and that's just something that we're going to have to watch.

Speaker 1 10:34

But there's definitely more deals coming in the market once the linear assets are truly spun out. A couple of things to go through just also here in terms of the deal, things that I see being reported, which I think is really important here. So I see some that say Fubo shareholders are really going to benefit from the deal with Disney. But let's really break down what this deal is all about and let's separate facts from speculation here. So what we heard was Disney's going to combine its Hulu plus live TV business with Fubo, be the majority owner of the resulting company to loan 70%. They have made a payment of $220 million along with Fox and WBD made a payment of $220 million along with Fox and WBD. Disney's also committed to provide $145 million loan term to Fubo in 2026 as part of the deal.

Speaker 1 11:36

Hulu SVOD is not included in this deal at all. Fubo's existing management team is still going to lead the company. David Gandler will still be in charge. Disney's going to enter into a new carriage agreement with Fubo, so Fubo is now going to be allowed to create a new sports and broadcast service, skinny Bundle. It'll feature Disney's premier sports broadcast networks. There's rumors it'll also include Fox. We don't know that. I wouldn't be surprised if that happens, but that is not confirmed. That's a rumor.

Speaker 1 12:01

As of now, based on the end of Q3, fubo and Hulu plus live TV combined have 6.2 million subscribers. I do see a lot of people comparing that to the 8 million number that YouTube TV last put out. Keep in mind that the YouTube TV number includes free trials YouTube did not say paid subscribers and there can be a lot of free trials taking place at any given time. So we don't know exactly how the 6.2 million combined to Fubo and Hulu Plus Live TV really compares to YouTube TV to YouTube TV. The other thing that was interesting to see Fubo put out, which was very helpful, was that the new entity, combined with Hulu Plus Live TV, has a 2028 PF revenue outlook of 7.5 plus billion and targeted adjusted EBITDA of 550 million. Very interesting to see them put those numbers out for 2028, three-year projection. Now the deal still has to get regulatory approval.

Speaker 1 13:07

I am not guessing or commenting on. Do I think it'll pass or not pass? I have no insight into that. I'm certainly no legal expert, so don't know. We'll just have to watch that. It's certainly good for Fubo because they become cash flow positive right away, so that's very good.

Speaker 1 13:28

Now I see multiple people reporting that Fubo and Hulu Plus Live TV is now combining into one service. That is not true. That is not accurate. Could it combine into one app or one service down the line? It absolutely could. Your guess is just as good or bad as mine, but CEO David Gandler of Fubo made it very clear that initially those two services are not combining. What he said today was quote. I think having two separate platforms today is obviously not ideal. We believe there are synergies on the back end in areas like broadcasting and transmission and CDN et cetera, but at the moment we want to really focus on providing consumers with choice, and the Hulu product is really focused on providing a full entertainment bundle of sports news and entertainment. Fubo will continue to focus on its sports-first service with the ability to launch skinnier sports bundles. So that tells you what they're thinking as far as the go-to-market strategy, of how they're comparing the two services in the market from a content standpoint, down the line. Could the services combine in some way? Sure, I guess they could, but anyone who's saying they're going to is completely making that up. That's a complete guess on their part.

Speaker 1 14:55

So a couple other things here. I'm seeing that people are saying with the deal Fubo shareholders will receive a handsome payout. I don't know what that means. Fubo stock was up 250% at one point. So if you're a shareholder and you sold your stock, sure you could potentially have done very well. But if you're not selling your stock, I don't know what a payout means. Fubo did not disclose any sort of payment to shareholders in terms of any sort of dividend in any way for being shareholders. So I don't know what that's in reference to.

Speaker 1 15:30

Multiple people have said well, fubo's service is going to be merged with Hulu plus live TV. Well, it's not being merged, it's not being made into one product. So I think the merge there that word is throwing some people off. I've seen multiple reports quote subscription prices will ramp up as a result of the merger, says who. We don't know. That's another one of those things. I'm not going to say prices are going up or down, because I don't know and neither does anybody else. That's a complete guess. Disney will presumably migrate Fubo over to the same streaming software stack as his, as Hulu. Okay, again, I'm not going to comment on that, but I don't know why that's being brought up. Uh, this one was interesting. Uh, somebody said neither Disney nor Google regularly release subscriber numbers or revenue numbers. Well, google doesn't, but Disney does all the time. Every quarter, disney releases how many subscribers they have for Hulu and they break out Hulu SVOD versus Hulu Live Plus TV. So I'm not sure how that's not known in the market, but those numbers are broken out.

Speaker 1 16:40

A couple other pieces of information that have come out from Disney. Disney did do a year in review post where they gave out some highlights on their ESPN Plus business, but, like last year, they didn't provide any viewership data, which was disappointing. So all they talked about was they delivered more than 34,000 live events, number of hours of original content. They did say that the most viewed event ever on ESPN Plus from a viewership standpoint was the NFL AFC Divisional Playoff game, but they didn't say how many viewers watched. So we don't really have any insight from Disney into ESPN Plus. So we don't really have any insight from Disney into ESPN+.

Speaker 1 17:21

They did this week at Disney's. They put on a conference talking about data and advertising. They disclosed that an estimated 157 million global monthly active streaming users on its ad-supported plans. So 157 million global, of which 112 million are domestic. So this is the first time they've released a number like this.

Speaker 1 17:47

Take a look at my post on LinkedIn in terms of how they came up with those numbers, because what they said was since there's no standard methodology that exists in the market for measuring global streaming audience sizes, they released their MAU methodology in a I guess it's like a press release, but it's a blog post, which was really interesting and I really like. I like the fact that they said well, not everyone's going to agree on how you measure MAU, so this is how we're doing it. So kudos to them for doing that. Now keep in mind that again, I think you should read exactly how they do the details of the methodology. But their ad supported MAU numbers are derived from active accounts across Disney's streaming ecosystem of Disney Plus, hulu and ESPN Plus, but this is important. It does not include Hotstar, hulu and ESPN plus, but this is important. It does not include Hotstar. Some people were including Hotstar in the numbers they specifically call out Hotstar is not included. Also, they specifically say that those numbers are without deduplication. That's important as well.

Speaker 1 18:56

Now their metric you'll love this one is for any user who is continuously viewed ad supported content for over 10 seconds. That's part of their metric 10 seconds. So take a look at that for more details online. You can see that on my LinkedIn page. I've got a couple of posts up there about that. So that's the news between Fubo Disney Venue. That's what we've got as of now.

Speaker 1 19:27

I do suspect some more information will come out. I do think some of the companies involved will be a little more vocal as well in terms of how they were thinking about some of the deals. Maybe not Disney. They tend to not be as vocal with that, but let's wait and see Anything else you're reading where people are just making statements as if they're facts. They're not. They're assumptions, especially anything involving merging of services and whatnot, because it's been made very clear that no service is merging anytime soon. Very clear that no service is merging anytime soon. So let's jump into Netflix now.

Speaker 1 20:04

So Netflix, if you weren't around over the new years, netflix gave out viewership figures globally for NFL streaming on Christmas. So they released these on December 31st. So now we have full global numbers. So for Christmas day game of the Ravens and Texans, the average minute audience peaked at 31.3 million. 24.3 million of that came from the US. So I think for anyone who covers our industry it's not too surprising that the vast majority of NFL viewership was in the US. We know that outside the US there's just not that large of a population of viewers who are interested in American football. But 31.3 million, that's still a very large live event. When you're comparing AMA against other events we've seen previously live event. When you're comparing AMA against other events we've seen previously. Important to note, though, that that 31.3 million is not I repeat, not just Netflix. That also includes CBS, local market viewing, nfl plus mobile viewing, also NFL viewing, nflcom, wherever else you can get it with NFL digital properties. So that's the total.

Speaker 1 21:22

We don't know the breakout of just Netflix. None of that is ever broken out by the NFL, unfortunately. Now we're going to have some people comparing these numbers to previous NFL games and, to be honest, it's getting really, really hard to make apples to apples comparisons here. To be honest, it's getting really really hard to make apples to apples comparisons here Because for the Netflix Christmas NFL games. The numbers reported take Nielsen's live, live and SD in the US, which also includes out-of-home viewing, the CBS local market, nfl Plus mobile and web viewing across Netflix. The international data is based on first-party Netflix data plus one data for TV, mobile and web, along with NFL reported viewing for the NFL's international distributors and NFL Game Pass outside the US. So if that sounded like a mouthful, that's because it was. It's getting really hard to compare streaming numbers for NFL to TV. It's extremely different. So just check that out online. You can see how I broke all that down if you want some more details on there.

Speaker 1 22:44

Now let's go into raw. So Netflix had a debut episode of raw for WWE on Monday. Netflix says it quote captured that's the number. They the term they use captured 4.97 million live global and they averaged 2.6 million households in the U S um. I. I've since talked to some folks and and I can confirm and say with um, with um guaranteed that the captured even though they use the word captured, netflix means AMA, average minute audience. That's what they're looking at. So 4.9 million Now we already saw some people saying man, they did about 5 million for WWE.

Speaker 1 23:31

That really is not very good when compared to NFL on Christmas. Well, again, let's stick to the facts here. Raw is not available in 92 countries and territories where Netflix doesn't yet have the rights to distribute WWE content. 92 territories Can't get it. In comparison, the NFL games on Christmas were available in every Netflix territory globally. You're comparing apples to bowling balls. It's just not the same. So you have to start with the numbers here when you're talking about comparison. Very important, I do believe that as more territories get content from WWE, you're going to see AMA numbers for Raw on the 10, 12, 13 million. It's only a matter of time. And then, finally, this is something that, frankly, I don't think Netflix is getting enough credit for in the market.

Speaker 1 24:29

How many people talked about Netflix not being able to get in the businesses live, not being able to scale? Oh, their CDN doesn't work and they don't know how to do caching and they'll have to deploy all this additional hardware. Blah, blah, blah. In 52 days 52 days, netflix went from putting on the boxing event, which was the largest stream we'd ever seen yes, with technical flaws learned from it, produced two NFL games on Christmas that were very good and then produced just a short time later the WWE event, which was just superb in terms of video quality, in 52 days. No other company in the world could have done that. I don't think. Well, youtube, because of the expertise and the infrastructure they have in place. 52 days that's when Netflix pulled off, and their live event team is still very small, very small. Now they've hired quite a few new people at the end of the year who've started in January. There'll certainly be more coming, but for those who've been in the trenches doing this stuff, think about what Netflix pulled off in 52 days. That is absolutely incredible and I think they deserve far more credit than they're getting in the market. And all this stuff about people posting you know well, we'll have to watch how they figure out how to do this and you know they'll have to deploy PDP technology. That is all nonsense. You start seeing anyone write about that on LinkedIn. Just stop reading the post, because Netflix just proved they could do live events at scale. They just did two NFL games on Christmas with over 30 million AMA. Show me another event that's come even close to that. There isn't, and they're only going to get better and they're only continuing to learn from those three events. So incredible what they have done. Final piece on Netflix here.

Speaker 1 26:21

News came out that they have signed exclusive US rights to FIFA Women's World Cup for 2027 and 2031. Again, I saw some people talking about oh my God, viewership that's going to be incredible for Netflix and whatnot. Well, I don't know how you define incredible, but I put up a blog post breaking down all the details on viewership for the Women's World Cup in 2023, 2019, and 2015. So in 2023, the Women's World Cup match, in which the United States tied to Netherlands, averaged 6.4 million. It was a World Cup stage match that was the most watched game in 2023 since the US women's team was knocked out in round 16. In 2019, when the United States beat Netherlands, it drew 13.9 million viewers on Fox, and of the 13.9 million viewers on Fox and of the 13.9 million viewers on Fox, 289,000 viewers were streaming the game AMA. In 2015, when the United States beat Japan, it averaged 16 million viewers on Fox and it peaked at 23 million, and it had 72,000 viewers streaming the game, and it had 72,000 viewers streaming the game. So if we look at some of these numbers, first thing we obviously note is, if the US gets knocked out, viewership goes down. No surprise, no-transcript. So it's great to have more content coming, but it's not as big as some suggest. The other thing you have to remember is, if you don't know how the Women's World Cup works, because the location is different whenever they have it, the viewership is impacted by start times. So, as an example, in 2023, the finals started at 6 am Eastern, whereas in 2015, the finals started at 7 pm Eastern. Changed viewership Not surprising at all. So we'll keep an eye on those numbers. We still have plenty of time there.

Speaker 1 28:48

Let's move on to NBC Sports. Nbc Sports released some interesting data here for NFL streaming for the entire full season, which was really cool of them. So thank you, nbc Sports for doing that, packaged it all up and they averaged 2.2 million viewers across Peacock NBC Sports, nbc Sports app and NFL digital properties for the whole year In 2024, nbc Sports. Two larger streaming events were, of course, the Peacock exclusive AFC wild card game. Last year on January 13th had an AMA audience of 23 million. That included local NBC stations as well, and then the other one was earlier this end of last year, september 6th, with the exclusive first game in Brazil. That had a total audience delivery of 14.2 million viewers, again across Peacock local stations, nfl Plus. So those are the two largest games for NBC Sports.

Speaker 1 29:52

Again, I know I'm giving out a lot of numbers today and it's hard to remember all these, so just look at my posts on LinkedIn. I've broken all these down Very simple. Here's bullet points of the numbers Recording this on Friday, january 10th. Tomorrow, saturday, january 11th, amazon has an exclusive NFL wildcard game on Prime. So it'll be super interesting to just compare those numbers to some of the viewership that we've seen from Peacock for exclusive wildcard game last year as well. So I'll put out those numbers as soon as we get those.

Speaker 1 30:29

Two weeks ago when we recorded Mark and I did not get to cover the news because we were so busy with everything else that came out. So this is a little older news. But DAZN is going to become Foxtel's new owner. That deal is worth about $3.4 billion. So for those that don't know Foxtel, you know at one time it was one of Australia's most profitable media companies and it began in 1995 as a partnership between Telstra and News Corp. So News Corp Australia and Telstra are going to diverse, diverse, divestify sorry, their ownership of 65% and 35% respectively, and it's going to be a stock for stock. Their loans that they have are going to be paid off $578 million $128 million their loans to Foxtel. Foxtel is currently $770 million in debt, so no surprise.

Speaker 1 31:26

A deal here is being done. Uh, we have a timeline here, given out of just early 2025 for closing. Uh, don't don't know exactly what that means, so we'll get more details. Uh, and and then part of the deal here, you know what the zone is getting. So I see a lot of people reporting the zone now has 20 million subscribers. I could have missed it, but I've yet to see that source being somebody from DAZN on the record, so I don't know where that number comes from. They are across all over the world in terms of countries and regions they're in. They've got rights to over 75 sporting competitions, so not surprising if they have 20 million. It sounds right, but I don't know exactly where that number is from. Foxtel ended the June quarter last year with over 1.2 million residential broadcast subscribers, which is down 10%, and that's been declining year over year. So to combat that, foxtel launched its own sports streaming service, ko I don't remember when that happened and then it launched a new popular platform called Binge. It's also got a new streaming aggregate offering called Hubble. So if you include streaming and cable, foxtel has grown its total paying subscription base, they say, to 4.7 million people. So interesting what DAZN is going to now have from a media property standpoint. We'll have to watch and see what they do with that, how they integrate that, how they package content. But that's another one to watch there.

Speaker 1 33:09

Moving on to more sports, diamond Sports Group has officially emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy. They're now going to be known as Main Street Sports Group. I mean, all right, it seems like kind of a boring name to me. They restructured almost $9 billion in debt during the bankruptcy production to $200 million, mostly through agreements with bondholders that exchange debt for equity. So that's normally how that deal works. They're still going to continue to serve viewers under the FanDuel Sports Network name. That's a new naming rights agreement that they did last year for 16 regional sports networks. In addition, main Street Sports Group, they have deals with 13 NBA teams, eight MLB teams and eight NHL teams. So that's officially done. They've emerged from bankruptcy, so that's definitely good for them and for consumers. Real quickly, paramount and Comcast announced the renewal of their distribution agreements. So Paramount, cbs, bet, comedy Central and whatnot will still be in Comcast. Also, as part of the renewal, comcast has the rights to make Paramount Plus with Showtime available to qualifying Xfinity customers. So that's a new one as well.

Speaker 1 34:30

Another one here on sports MSG Network's blackout dispute with Altice Still ongoing as the recording of this Optimum is pushing customers to MSG's new Gotham Sports app, which I think is a terrible approach. If you're a customer and you're getting content like the Knicks already as part of your pay TV package and all of a sudden the company says, well, you can no longer get the Knicks, but you can get them if you go over here and pay a new fee, why should you pay extra for content you're already getting as an optimum cable TV customer? It doesn't make any sense. Also, the Gotham Sports app is horrible. I mean, I know horrible is kind of a strong word there, but it is horrible. It is terrible.

Speaker 1 35:15

I see latency sometimes in that app of up to three minutes. I'm not exaggerating, I've got to stop watching my phone. Up to three minutes, frozen video, black screens, apps that don't load. If you look on any given night on Twitter with users who use that service, they're reporting problems every single night. So I don't know who the vendor is that built that app in the video stack for MSG and yes, but they should be replaced. It just does not work well. I saw users last night night before complaining about latency of more than 90 minutes, people sharing screenshots of well, I logged in, then just goes to a black screen and, considering the price points which I don't have in front of me, consumers are paying a lot of money to have access to the content in that app. So MSG and yes should really be doing a lot better. We also got news of a price hike, so Discovery Plus in the US is going up by a dollar, so the ad-supported monthly plan will be $6. Ad-free will be $10. Existing subscribers you're going to see that go up next month.

Speaker 1 36:25

Roku announced it surpassed 90 million streaming households in the first week of January. We don't have any usage information there. They ended fiscal year 2024 with 89.8 million. Another one with not much information Tubi. They announced they ended 2024 with 97 million MAUs, but of course we don't know what MAUs mean, since there's no definition with that, so unknown there.

Speaker 1 36:52

Let's go into some infrastructure news here. Based on a court filing, we now know that Akamai acquired 525 contracts from Egeo for security in the content delivery business as part of Egeo's bankruptcy auction. I don't know how many websites and streaming services the contract covers, since the contracts have multiple brands and properties under parent companies. Some of the contracts this was a filing also talked the names. It talked dates of the contract the last SOW but it did not talk the value of the contracts, so we don't have that. The Egeo network will shut down on January 15th, so five days from now, so we'll see what happens with some additional assets after that. I'm not answering any questions on that right now. Some deals have already taken place, but probably more news coming out about that. Uplink is now its own company, so that's great. They've separated those assets from Egeo, so that's great. It's its own company. You can go to Uplink's own website now, which is great. So officially come I guess it's January 16th all those who went over to the Uplink acquisition, which was separate from the Akamai contracts, you know they're now Uplink employees, which is really good. A large portion of people from Egeo got to keep their jobs and go over to Uplink, so very good there. Great for those people who still got to keep their jobs.

Speaker 1 38:26

Another infrastructure piece of news here. This is interesting and one to watch. I don't know if there's a larger impact, but a milan court issued a pretty landmark ruling against digital piracy because it agreed with syria league in its lawsuit against cdm provider cloudflare. So the court has ordered Cloudflare to prevent users from accessing websites illegally streaming Series A football matches by blocking their domain names and network traffic. It's telling them they have to do that Also. This is an interesting piece. The court says Cloudflare must also share information about its customers and users who utilize its services to distribute pirated content. The court also ordered Cloudflare to cease providing CDN, dns and proxy services to websites involved in illegal streaming of Siri A matches. It also said Cloudflare will be fined 10,000 euros per day for noncompliance to court order. So the court? If you read it, I can condense it down to one sentence. The court said despite I'm paraphrasing here despite being notified of the issue, cloudflare failed to take sufficient measures to prevent its services from being used for illegal activities, so they're holding them liable. So that's interesting. We haven't seen that before, where CDNs are held liable like that. Now, so far I've not seen any public statement from Cloudflare since this news came out, so I don't know if they're planning to say something. We'll release something, but the news is about a week old, so it's something to keep an eye on. It's obviously the core of Milan, so it's not a large area yet, but does this set some sort of precedent? Maybe in other locations in Europe? I don't know, but it's definitely one to watch.

Speaker 1 40:26

Two other pieces of information here. So, news from CES? I didn't. I'm not at CES, I didn't go Many people ask, and I've actually, believe it or not, never been to CES ever in 30 years in the industry, and the reason is CES for so long. Folks will remember back in the days it was, it was just a little bit of everything. It was like, hey, this new robot or refrigerator is coming out, or that's just not stuff I cover. Some of it was hardware related, but a lot of news at CES too was products that would never come out. I felt it was almost like going to auto shows where they show you a concept car but it's never going to be made available to consumers, and so for many years, ces became a show where products were shown off that would never see the light of day. That's not the case anymore. There's definitely still a lot of futuristic things there, but there wasn't really much this year, I would say in the TV news, which is the only portion of CES news I look at, you had a couple things here to highlight.

Speaker 1 41:36

Of course, ai was everywhere, but all the use cases of AI were okay. Tvs are going to have AI that are going to help you create new wallpapers and art. Okay, I guess LG is going to use it to do voice matching to customize the home screen. Okay, a little bit of personalization. Samsung is going to use it to do voice matching to customize the home screen. Okay, a little bit of personalization. Samsung is going to use AI to translate captions into seven languages Okay, great If it works. I haven't seen anything that captions content that well and accurately in real time. That's the key to in real time. Uh, google's going to work on? Uh, use AI to work on creating new summaries for its Google's TV platform. Okay, you know it can take some content and read the news to you every morning, I guess. But are you really waking up and turning on your TV as the first device? I'm guessing no, it's your phone or your computer.

Speaker 1 42:29

This one I don't get. Panasonic, which has had a 10 year absence from North America, is coming back to the US market with TVs and it's teamed up with Amazon to launch three new Fire TV-powered sets. We don't need more options in the US market for TVs. The Panasonic TVs that they announced when I looked at the specs, are not different than anything else out there at that price point and how many consumers in the US, even though that Panasonic still exists as a brand. So I don't see the approach there. I don't see how that benefits anybody. Sharp also partnered with Zumo. If you don't know Zumo, it's the JV between Comcast and Charter. So Sharp's going to come out with a range of Zumo TVs this spring. Okay, fine, but again, sharp, I don't see that as being a brand. Sharp's also going to announce or they announced, I should say release a powered set by Tiva OS later this year. But that's really the only news I saw at all from CES.

Speaker 1 43:36

And then the final piece here, and this is a really interesting post that went up today. So Pierre Theron over well, used to be over at StreamRoot CEO and co-founder and he put up an interesting post today. What I really liked about it was it was so genuine and straight to the point and no fluff and no marketing BS. So StreamRoot, a CDN that was based on mesh and P2P technology. In 2019, it was acquired by CenturyLink and it valued the company between about $20 million to $30 million, so about five times revenue. Multiple StreamRoot had raised about $6 million in the market at the time. And so what Pierre talked about here was he said why did we sell StreamRoot in 2019?

Speaker 1 44:24

And his post was saying if you're someone in the market who has a company who's thinking about M&A and what you should do, he said here are the points you should ask yourself when considering M&A. And the first thing he said is founder fatigue is real. He said twice StreamRoot was staring at bankruptcy. They made many mistakes in raising two rounds and, frankly, they needed a break. That was just first point. Right, real right. It's tiring, it's hard, it creates a lot of stress, a lot of turmoil at home. Right, it impacts your families, so it's very hard to do to run a company.

Speaker 1 45:09

Second, this is a great one. He said what's the real TAM? We all love slapping a billion dollar market size and funding slides to impress VCs. But he said our media customer targets were shrinking with market consolidation. The business opportunity was big but not concentrated into just a few customers. True. How many times do we see companies say the market tam is x, when in reality they're not targeting that entire tam, they're targeting just a sliver of it? Third, he said what's the competition? Like pricing wars and cdn commoditization was tough and slowed our growth.

Speaker 1 45:48

Reality, right, that's that's a ceo and co-founder about. This is the reality in the market and we have to accept it, as opposed to some other CDNs who, when they saw that in the market, said nah, nah, our customers need us. They would never go to a competitor, we could never go under. They need us. You know they rely on us too much. You're living in denial.

Speaker 1 46:12

And then his next one was is it the right time? He said stream, it was growing two times year over year. But it's better to sell on a high note than wait for stagnation. And when the M&A window might not happen again soon, that's right. You don't know if it'll open back up. So loved his post.

Speaker 1 46:33

Real world that is what's going on in the market at any given time with every single company they're looking at what are the pros and cons of raising money, staying where they are, growing organically, trying to grow faster, mergers and acquisitions, who it would make sense for what they're valued at that. That is reality of the market. So I appreciate him putting that live to everybody what he was thinking, because we hear too much fluff in the market about mergers and acquisitions and it's interesting, I think, when many times a company makes an announcement, a vendor and they've sold, everyone in the comments section is so quick to congratulate them and pat them on the back, and many times they're being acquired for less revenue than they have. Their investors didn't get any of their money back. It's not a good deal for the company. They sold at the wrong time. What are they being congratulated for? So you have to base the value of an acquisition based on how did somebody value your company, what they felt it was worth in the market, because you're only worth what someone's willing to pay. That's reality. So appreciated him putting that up there. Shout out to him for that.

Speaker 1 47:49

I'm going to highlight it on LinkedIn. I haven't yet, but I will. So that's what we got this week. I appreciate you know. I know that was a lot to go through. I'll just add that programming for the NAB Show Streaming Summit is coming along really well. There's quite a few companies. You know all by name, including some of the largest ones I've talked about today, who have already committed to come do presentations, especially stuff around technical workflow for live. We're going to have some really great stuff from some of the largest live streamers on the web. A lot of really interesting stuff coming up there. So I'll start putting content news out in February.

Speaker 1 48:27

For sure, registration for the NAB Streaming Summit and the whole NAB show will open let's see next week. So if you're planning on going and you already know, shoot me an email, hit me up on LinkedIn, be happy to give you a discount code. Nab is doing registration a bit different this year. There's not going to be register before this date. It's cheaper. Register by this date it's cheaper. That's just too confusing. So if you want a discount code, reach out. That's going to be the best way to get a code from me. If you have more than a certain number of individuals from your organization going or planning to go, I'll also make a discount code just for your organization with your company's name in it. You can share it inside the organization as well, but reach out anytime. So Mark will be back next week.

Speaker 1 49:12

We've got more, more content that we'll cover coming up. Also, keep in mind that we have Netflix earnings in January 21st and then after that we already have Apple, comcast, microsoft Charter, some of the other pay TV providers, so a lot of data is going to be coming out. As always, it seems like it never stops in our industry with data and numbers, but the Netflix ones, you know earnings in particular. We're hoping to get some good numbers from them. In the meantime, if you have any questions, please reach out to me, let me know. Check out LinkedIn. I've put all this stuff up online. I know it can be a lot. This week on LinkedIn was almost 600,000 impressions between all my posts. Appreciate everyone reading them. I still am trying to get to some of the questions in the comments. I'll get to them by this weekend, but any questions anytime, reach out. Appreciate everyone listening. We'll be back next week. Everyone have a good week. Thanks very much.

Speaker 2 50:05

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.