FuboTV bought exclusive livestreaming rights for English and Spanish commentary to the South American Football Confederation’s Qatar World Cup 2022 qualifying matches, it said Thursday. Rights include the remaining 70 matches, scheduled to begin in June; additional match windows are scheduled through 2021 and into 2022, it said. Re-air and highlight rights are included.
When consumers around the world are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, “the daily routine that came screeching to a halt in 2020 will not be reprised, but rather, rearranged,” an IBM study found. Though crowded trains and concert halls were an accepted part of pre-pandemic life, “many people have a new threshold for public interaction and expectations of personal space,” said the company Thursday. IBM canvassed 15,000 adults in Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, India, Mexico, Spain, the U.K. and the U.S. in February, finding 52% said they will change “the extent to which they interact with people outside of their household after they are vaccinated,” said the company. Three in 10 plan to interact with others less than before the pandemic, while slightly more than a fifth (22%) saying they will interact more. People who said they were in crowds or large groups “almost constantly” before the pandemic want to change that lifestyle, with 40% planning to scale back that interaction.
The Joe Biden administration is "flat wrong" to suggest that broadband providers face little competition as justification for its proposed $100 billion investment in broadband infrastructure, blogged USTelecom CEO Jonathan Spalter Wednesday (see 2103310064). It's a "persistent myth" that policymakers should "reject ... an otherwise historic commitment to universal connectivity," Spalter said. "Today’s broadband marketplace is ultra-competitive, defined by increasing speeds and lots of capacity, new providers and next-generation technologies like 5G.” The government should be "deepening its partnership with private broadband innovators," he said, "while lowering the barriers to deployment that saddle projects with red tape and wasteful delays."
Growth in e-commerce is driving an increase in last-mile deliveries and the need for more drivers, with many new drivers lacking previous commercial driving experience, reported ABI Research Wednesday. At the same time, regulatory measures in North America, Europe and China are bringing more technology into commercial fleets, said the researcher. Shipments of video solutions that can prevent accidents by proactively detecting driver fatigue or distraction are seen rising 29% by 2026 to $8 billion, it said. Commercial video telematics developers are working on systems with gesture and object recognition, 360-degree views of in-cab and road-triggers, and livestreaming for up to eight cameras, it said.
Global information technology spending is projected to reach $4.1 trillion this year, up 8.4% from 2020, reported Gartner Wednesday. All IT spending segments are forecast to have “positive growth” through 2022, it said. The highest growth will come from devices (up 14%) and enterprise software (up 10.8%), “as organizations shift their focus to providing a more comfortable, innovative and productive environment for their workforce,” said Gartner. “IT no longer just supports corporate operations as it traditionally has, but is fully participating in business value delivery,” said Gartner Vice President John-David Lovelock. “Not only does this shift IT from a back-office role to the front of business, but it also changes the source of funding from an overhead expense that is maintained, monitored and sometimes cut, to the thing that drives revenue.”
As virtual MVPDs continue to poach customers from traditional pay TV, the need to address one of their most appealing differentiators -- no-contract subscriptions -- continues to challenge the segment, said Parks Associates analyst Paul Erickson at the company’s virtual Future of Video conference last week. “There’s a higher level of churn than in traditional pay-TV services,” a factor that’s “likely to persist,” said Erickson, asking panelists what strategies vMVPDs could adopt to stem customer defections. Nic Wilson, TiVo head-customer success, said one possibility is to bundle over-the-top subscriptions like T-Mobile’s subscriber retention tack: “Find those services so that if they cancel your service, they’re not just canceling video." Erickson said the user experience is important to reduce subscriber churn, whether it’s superior content aggregation or a smarter, more personalized experience where relevant content is surfaced to subscribers. That can help retain customers in an environment where “people are bombarded by choice.” Michael Ribero, ViacomCBS’ Paramount+ vice president-global marketing, said an vMVPD service has “got to work like regular TV.” To ask someone from the traditional pay-TV world to come over to a vMVPD service means there can be no change in quality of service from pay TV, “which worked 99.9% of the time,” Ribero said. “I can’t say that always happens in the virtual world.” Customers particularly aren’t forgiving of a subpar sports experience, Ribero said. “If you have any sort of buffering or any sort of lapse, there’s no amount of customer service, there’s no amount of rebate -- people hate you and they want to leave.” The vMVPD experience should replicate the immediacy of over-the-air and MVPD TV viewing: “Being able to turn on [the TV], and something is just on,” Ribero said, would counter OTT viewers’ increasing “discovery fatigue.” It’s also important to let customers know that a vMVPD service is a complement to Netflix and Hulu, not a competitor, as consumers try to make sense of the myriad content options, he said. Ribero said it may be time for the industry to change the way it measures churn to reflect the different needs of the OTT model. A football fan who returns to a football package season after season doesn’t fit an old churn measurement model, he said: “Is that a win or not?” The ability to do “subscription management” based on channels within a bundle would give vMVPDs a “value-add” over other services, said Greg Riker, head-business development and sales, Americas, for Comcast's Metrological. An AI-based algorithm that understands subscribers' viewing interests could serve suggestions to swap channels for one more closely aligned with their interests. That would be a way to drive value for the service, he said.
COVID-19 stay-at-home orders propelled the online video and gaming markets to $330 billion in 2020 revenue, reported ABI Research Tuesday. Streaming video subscription revenue surpassed $69 billion, and online gaming was up 22% year over year, it said. Though media consumption rates "will taper off from the peaks seen during lockdowns as the world returns to a sense of normalcy," the public's appetite for digital content and services is "expected to remain strong," said ABI analyst Michael Inouye. “The common consensus from most industry insiders is a shift in the growth curve rather than an expected dip to pre-pandemic forecasts."
SpaceX's low earth orbit Starlink broadband constellation likely would be a "relatively modest" competitive threat to terrestrial ISPs, MoffettNathanson's Craig Moffett wrote investors Monday. One chief issue is limitations of use of such a constellation, he said, noting that with 12,000 satellites in orbit, SpaceX could support about 800,000 U.S. households, less than 1% of the U.S. market. Even with 42,000 satellites and each satellite tripling its capacity, that would give Starlink an addressable market of "just a few million U.S. households," he said: Starlink "can still be a game changer for anyone living in areas uneconomical to reach for terrestrial broadband operators." SpaceX didn't comment.
The domestic box office recovery has begun, with Godzilla vs. Kong driving the best North American opening weekend of the COVID-19 pandemic, with a five-day box office of $48.5 million, Colliers analyst Steven Frankel wrote investors Monday. The film played on over 3,000 screens and was included with HBO Max subscriptions for no extra charge. Imax generated 9.3% of the domestic box office. Attendance demonstrated “strong consumer demand for the format,” as over 1,000 Imax shows, or more than 25% of the weekend's show times, were sold out, said the analyst. It also earned $71 million in international markets.
More than a quarter of direct-to-consumer video streaming services are used in more than one household, reported Leichtman Research Group Friday. Of the 27%, 13% are used and paid for by subscribers who share them with someone outside the household, and 12% are used in one household but borrowed from another household that is paying for the service, said the researcher. Some 69% are paid for and not shared with others outside the household, said LRG, while 16% of all households have at least one DTC service fully paid for by someone else. Four percent of services aren't paid for because they're included in another service, it said. Of those ages 18-34, 26% have at least one DTC service fully paid for by someone else, vs. 12% of those 35 and older. Among virtual MVPD subscribers, 77% are “very satisfied” with their service, up from 69% in 2018; 13% are very likely to switch from a vMVPD service in the next six months, vs. 27% in 2018; 18- to 44-year-olds have 63% of vMVPD subscriptions; and 20% of all vMVPD services are shared by multiple households, said LRG. Sharing of streaming services “should not solely be viewed as lost revenue, as the ability to share with others is also part of the retention strategy for the services,” said principal Bruce Leichtman.