March Madness for streamers
Rebranding, price hikes and content wars: Who can beat the churn factor?
There are so many doing so much. But which will win? We have your bracket.
Get your brackets ready. March Madness is fast approaching not just for college basketball but also for the media and entertainment giants battling for streaming video dominance.
ViacomCBS on Wednesday will lay out plans for its direct-to-consumer strategy, marking the Wall Street coming-out party for Paramount+ (rebranded from CBS All Access) ahead of its March 4 launch. Paramount+ gets a big promotional push during the actual March Madness games because CBS shares the tourney’s broadcast rights with WarnerMedia’s Turner.
On March 26, Walt Disney Co. hikes the price of Disney+ from $7 a month (or $70 a year) to $8 a month (or $80 a year). Also, the cost of the Disney bundle — Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ — goes up to a monthly $14 from $13. On Tuesday, Disney launched its general entertainment brand Star on Disney+ in Europe, Australia and other countries.
And then there’s the March 18 debut on HBO Max of “Zack Snyder’s Justice League,” the fabled “Snyder Cut” on which WarnerMedia spent an estimated $70 million to achieve the director’s original vision.
Metaphors in business are imperfect. I recall Frost & Sullivan’s Dan Rayburn, who served in the military, pushing back against the “streaming wars” terminology when we were writing about what to expect in late 2019. To me, the sports tournament framework is better, because people expect a gradual consolidation of winners.
We may see a Final Four scenario that continues for the foreseeable future.
Netflix (203 million subscribers) and Disney+ (94.9 million) are the clear consensus picks to make it into the final rounds. Digital TV Research analyst Simon Murray last week projected Disney+ would exceed Netflix’s global count by 2026 (294 million vs. 286 million by then).
Who has the best chances at the remaining slots?
Apple TV+ and Amazon Prime Video, owned by tech companies worth $3.7 trillion combined, are really in a different league. They’re like teams without salary caps (forgive the mixing of metaphors between the NBA and the NCAA). Apple paid $25 million for a Sundance movie and is bulking up with deals for content, including Skydance’s animated film and TV slate. Amazon has a new incoming CEO whose affinity for Hollywood is unknown but, as we recently reported, few expect the Seattle giant to pull back any time soon.
What happens with the newer entrants HBO Max, Peacock and Paramount+, or for that matter the niche services — the Shudders, Britboxes and Criterion Channels of the world — is still unclear. (Send your brackets to wideshot@latimes.com.)
The entry of Paramount+ into the streaming battle has the feel of the last guy showing up in “The Avengers,” even though its predecessor, CBS All Access, has been around since 2014.
Analysts most want to know how much capital ViacomCBS is putting into its streaming efforts.
“The biggest question is how much incremental investment should we expect to see,” Doug Creutz, media analyst at Cowen & Co., told me last week. “Is it a modest amount along the lines of Discovery, or more aggressive along the lines of Disney?”
Creutz is betting Paramount+ will be more on the aggressive side. Wall Street values more heavy investment these days, putting a premium on the potential for future profits rather than short-term metrics. ViacomCBS investors surely will want to see information explaining how the company’s sacrifice of short-term profits will pay off in the future. ViacomCBS declined to comment ahead of its investor day.
Many observers think an industry of dozens of services asking for $5 a month or more is unsustainable. John Mass, a veteran dealmaker who serves as executive vice president at Content Partners (owner of the Revolution Studios and FilmDistrict catalogs), expects a wave of consolidation among the midlevel streamers and media and entertainment companies.
“I do not think it’ll take three to five years for the dust to settle,” Mass said. “You’re going to see consolidation very, very soon. Some of these companies will join forces, because there’s just too much at stake. In order to survive, I think they’re going to have to combine, and it’s going to happen much faster than we thought it was going to a year ago.”
That’s a bold prediction. The counterargument is that the stocks of companies launching streaming services right now are up significantly, including ViacomCBS and Discovery, and they’ll want to give themselves some time to see whether their plans actually work before doing anything drastic.
One of the major factors in the competition will be “churn,” or the number of people quitting services. Analyst Matthew Ball’s review of data company Antenna’s churn charts is worth a look.
Ball notes that some services’ churn rates spike or dip when key shows end or return (“The Mandalorian,” “Game of Thrones”) and depending on what promotional pricing is available. His analysis of Antenna’s data, which is based on its access to consumers’ transactions, suggests a mix of content, price and plain old competition as the reasons for churn.
As Rich Greenfield noted in a tweeted response, Hulu’s churn line slowly rose as more competitors entered the market, after dipping when it was wrapped into Disney’s streaming bundle.
Another important data point: Households that signed up for Disney+ are less likely to drop Netflix than HBO Max or CBS All Access. People generally are willing to subscribe to both.
One question is, what factor drives churn the most, price or content? A new survey from software and services company Amdocs suggests that the amount and quality of content on a service is a bigger deal than cost.
In its survey of 1,000 U.S. consumers, Amdocs — parent of video technology factor with consumers, it’s no longer the most significant reason they stick around.” From Vubiquity CEO Darcy Antonellis’ blog post on the findings: “When asked what drives their loyalty to video streaming services, almost half said the amount of content (49%), followed by the quality of the content (45%) and pricing (38%).”
Amdocs also shared data on how much people are spending: 42% of respondents said they spend more than $25 a month on video streaming. A further breakdown: 10% spend $50-$100 (OK), 6% spend $100-$150 (yikes) and 2% spend more than $150 (seriously, how?).
If you're one of those people paying $150 a month for streaming video, maybe give password-sharing a try.