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Streamers set sights on sports

At a time when content production budgets are seemingly ballooning out of control (I’m looking at you Amazon, with your US$465 Million Lord of the Rings budget), the major US streaming operators appear to be looking towards a different avenue to drive growth. This week, we saw Apple made its long-anticipated entry into the realm […]

Stick or twist – can ITV survive backlash to its streaming revamp?

It is not an especially good time to be a pubcaster in the UK. The BBC has had a years-long spat with the Conservative government, culminating in the latter’s decision to abolish the licence fee in 2027 and freeze funding for the broadcaster – a move that will force the BBC to cut £2.5 billion […]

Old brands, new stories: ‘Heritage’ media’s big challenge 

Rob Gallagher, vice president of consumer research at Omdia, examines the challenges facing ‘heritage brands’ in the media business, and their attempts to keep up with the industry’s streaming leaders. “We didn’t come into this business to build broadband. We didn’t come into this business to sell phones or to build cloud. The people that […]

Paramount rebrand is final throw of the dice for the company to be a streaming leader

So long ViacomCBS, we hardly knew ye. Less than three years after re-merging, ViacomCBS has ditched the branding to fly under the flag of Paramount Global. This, combined with a pledge to invest more than US$6 billion in content by 2024 has seen the company capture headlines all around the world as a major statement […]

Nordic streamer’s milestone shows that there’s life outside of the US

For all the recent talk of Netflix under delivering, Disney performing better than expected, and WarnerMedia on the verge of its megamerger with Discovery, it would be easy to forget that there’s more to the competitive SVOD market than the businesses of major US players. Truthfully, it is impossible to ignore the size, scale and […]

BT playing long game with Discovery sports deal

‘Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.’ The words of Michael Corleone or BT CEO Phillip Jansen? Earlier this week, it looked all-but-certain that BT was set to exit the world of sports broadcasting after just under a decade in an US$800 million deal with UK-based streaming company DAZN. Even […]

HBO success is a good sign for Warner Bros. Discovery, but troubling for AT&T

After a somewhat rocky start involving technical and carriage issues, HBO Max has firmly established itself as one of the big dogs of US streaming. At a time when Netflix is arguably hitting the first major speedbump in its history, the relative newcomer from AT&T-owned (for now) WarnerMedia is thriving.  The company this week reported […]

Netflix’s ‘poor’ results serve as reflection of pull-forward pandemic and a competitive streaming landscape

On paper, missing a subscriber target by 100,000 internationally doesn’t seem like much in the grand scheme of things when you’ve already got over 200 million paying customers, but Netflix’s marginally worse than expected Q4 2021 results have sent investors reeling. Announcing its results, the SVOD leader revealed additions of 8.3 million net new customers […]

BT’s potential sports deal with DAZN suits all parties

Less than a year after it confirmed that it was exploring a sale, BT is reportedly approaching a deal to sell off its sports broadcaster, BT Sport, to DAZN for an estimated US$800 million. For BT, the funds would go towards building out its rapidly expanding fibre network across the UK as it faces the […]

Is the ‘streaming war’ a three-horse race?

Jason Kilar is a confident man.  Less than a year ago, it was reported that the WarnerMedia CEO was negotiating his departure from the company following news of the AT&T division’s merger with Discovery – a merger which was approved by the European Commission just before Christmas. Now however, the exec seems fully settled in […]

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