I am around 🏟️ #SPOBIS Conference 2025 hosted by @spobis_gmbh in📍Hamburg (🇩🇪) through 📆 Thursday (February 6) — drop me a DM to catch up or connect 📨 #OneFootball #OTT #Streaming

RT @YannickRamcke: Smart move by Apple TV to augment accessibility for end consumers to MLS Season Pass in short order — and might be rolle…

Smart move by Apple TV to augment accessibility for end consumers to MLS Season Pass in short order — and might be rolled back over the next few seasons as the distribution marketplace and consumer preferences evolve: • 😵‍💫 Out of sight, out of mind: There are more access barriers than paywalls to overcome for (interested) end consumers, namely informational (content discovery and navigation) and technical challenges (digital divide and adoption curve). • 📺 Co-existing systems: Instead of supplanting, streaming has supplemented traditional cable/satellite television — and it will remain a bifurcated distribution marketplace for the foreseeable future. Apple TV has now captured most die-hard MLS fans after two seasons of fully-exclusive availability within the Apple TV ecosystem — who were more or less willing to jump through all hoops necessary. To penetrate the more casual football consumer market, consumption barriers must be reduced as everyone is fighting for consumers‘ same limited resources: ⏳time and 💳 money. Every content owner prefers direct-to-consumer relationships, but even a brand powerhouse with built-in distribution engines like Apple (install base of 2.35 billion active devices globally) relies on third-party subscribers (through third-party storefronts such as Google, Amazon, and Roku) and even wholesale customers (traditional pay-TV subscribers via DirecTV, Comcast, etc.) to capture the total addressable market.

RT @YannickRamcke: 🎧 Episode 32 of #TheBundle is 🆙 (since last week, so subscribing to the UP newsletter below is obviously a better shot a…

RT @YannickRamcke: Prime Video reaching on-paper (accounting) profitability is primarily an accounting spreadsheet exercise — since it’s fi…

Prime Video reaching on-paper (accounting) profitability is primarily an accounting spreadsheet exercise — since it’s first and foremost a subscriber acquisition and retention marketing vehicle for the Prime subscription, where value attribution might be more art then science: • 🏈 Incremental investment budget allocation: Exclusive live sports programming might be a more cost-efficient use of budgets than other content or marketing opportunities to acquire and retain subscribers (e.g. limited-time offers, extended free trials, win-back campaigns). On a related note, and further proof that Prime Video primarily serves as add-on to the broader Prime content, product, and service subscription rather than a stand-alone business line item: • 📺 Strategic trade-off between scale and integration: Prime Video’s channel store to access premium add-on video subscription services from third-party programmers (“Prime Channels”) with its near-frictionless approach to payments and subscriptions — in contrast to any other video aggregation platform / channel store (such as #Google’s Primetime Channels, #Roku’s Channel Store, or #Apple’s Apple TV Channels) — is reserved for paying subscribers of Prime Video only. Whereas that creates significant consumer lock-in — imagine wanting to cancel your Prime (Video) subscription while all your third-party video subscriptions are managed and billed through this consumer gateway — it obviously limits scale of the “Amazon Hub” and related recurring service revenue (shares) from such add-on subscription business.

🎧 Episode 32 of #TheBundle is 🆙 (since last week, so subscribing to the UP newsletter below is obviously a better shot at staying up to date than following my post on X), talking again all things #sports #media with @UnffclPrtnr and @MurrayBarnett — including but not limited to: ⚽️ FIFA Women’s World Cup on Netflix: Why [a] the deal says more about FIFA than Netflix, [b] unbundling women’s media rights from the men’s game is a risky go-to market strategy, and [c] growth in the U.S. will need to be driven by ARPU expansion (advertising) and lifetime extension (engagement) for Netflix rather new subscriber acquisition. 🏈 NFL Christmas Games on Netflix: Why [a] technical excellence has been expected post-Paul-vs-Tyson fight, [b] even the most-distributed streaming service still means compromising on reach, and [c] may make the NFL rethink its approach for next year as a result. 🇦🇺 DAZN enters Australian market by acquiring Foxtel: Why [a] it’s not as simple for DAZN (or Big Tech) as simply waiting on rights becoming available, [b] acquiring market-leading content, consumer brands, subscriber bases, and production expertise can be a market-entry shortcut, and [c] sports remain local and tribal, and might not travel automatically across the world. ➕ much more, including a some predictions heading into 2️⃣0️⃣2️⃣5️⃣ 📧 Subscribe to The Bundle Bulletin by the UP Newsletter below for more bits and pieces from the most recent episode.

RT @YannickRamcke: Retention is now the primary driver of growth, as #Netflix (and other SVOD services) mature from acquisition- to retenti…

RT @YannickRamcke: Now that “Netlix has passed (broken) the NFL Christmas test (record) and arrived in sports media” according to everybody…

Retention is now the primary driver of growth, as #Netflix (and other SVOD services) mature from acquisition- to retention-first businesses. Content portfolio strategies and investments will adjust accordingly, to increase customer lifetime values through increased #engagement, reduced #churn, and higher #ARPUs. Case in point: FIFA Women’s World Cup on Netflix, (see below for more) 👇🏼 Disclaimer: The highest return on any incremental investment might not be on content but technology (e.g. personalization).

Venu Sports became more of a liability (with known and unknown risks) than an asset for Disney, was supposed to smoothen but not entirely solve the #Disney’s linear-to-streaming transition. The settlement with #Fubo probably never aimed at unblocking its launch (other plaintiffs’ such as competitors and state legislatures would obviously not go away easily), but to unblock the company’s broader, long-term DTC strategy: Disney started to mix and match, cross-pollinate, and unify its streaming services within the DTC segment, both technically (e.g. #ESPNPlus and #Hulu on #DisneyPlus) and commercially (e.g. Disney bundle with 40%+ discount on monthly a-la-cart prices). As part of this, #HuluLiveTV — born as a cost-efficient cross-selling opportunity in 2017 to Hulu’s enormous SVOD customer base — has almost become a strategic and commercial impediment, and will probably be phased-out as part of the post-merger integration: • ♟️Strategically: Due the DTC bundling strategies applied by Disney (due to superior economics in terms of scale, avg. revenue per customer, and/or churn), Hulu with Live TV has been increasingly deprioritized in marketing and promotion, and required expensive over-communication to reduce consumer confusion (where it’s include or not). • 🧮 Commercially: As the traditional pay-TV business has been in structural decay and even tier-, and virtual MVPDs only picking up about one-third of the slack, multi-channel video programming distribution has become a low-margin, commoditized business racing to the bottom (i.e. primarily competing on prices and channel line-ups) and suffering from a marginal fixed-cost problem (i.e. fixed carriage fee per subscriber payable to programmers) — especially if it’s the only (Fubo, Hulu with Live TV) and instead of one of multiple business lines (#SlingTV by Dish, #YouTubeTV by Google) of the operating company. The only way out as a stand-alone virtual MVPD: scale, scale, scale (6M+ subscribers combined) to … • outgrow the marginal fixed-cost problem, • enforce as good carriage terms and conditions as possible, as well as • become a relevant channel store of add-on streaming subscriptions, and • present an advertising business with critical mass. Fubo as a pure-play virtual MVPD with improved scale, and 70% strategic ownership by one of the biggest programmers, is better than before, but still faces challenging unit economics and probably more lawsuits in case of any exclusive bundle options (assuming that industry practices such arm’s length transaction principles and most-favored nation clauses still apply, despite controlling ownership by Disney). On a related note: Fubo CEO Gandler as next Disney or ESPN CEO (in case that Pitaro is promoted) remains a long shot, but more likely than the week before.

RT @YannickRamcke: #UFC going-to-(sports rights)-market is the last tier-one sports property up for grabs in the world’s biggest sports rig…

#UFC going-to-(sports rights)-market is the last tier-one sports property up for grabs in the world’s biggest sports rights market for the foreseeable future … and another bellwether for where the North American and, to a lesser extent, the global global sports broadcasting market is going. • ☑️ Full set of media rights: Blank slate with both domestic and international rights being available, which is (1) rare for year-round or seasonal programming properties* and (2) overly appealing to Big-Tech used to operate and scale globally (instead of the traditional market-by-market approach in sports broadcasting). • 🎥 Self-contained media product: Ready-made, fully produced programming seeking the most powerful distribution and monetization vehicle, which nullifies competitive advantages inherent to legacy/incumbent broadcasting partners (e.g. production expertise and infrastructure). • 📺 Limited (linear programming) shelf space: Streaming’s biggest innovation to date has been unlocking unlimited shelf space, whereby UFC faces strong competition (from other top-of-the-pyramid sports, rather than non-sports programming) for limited number of (prime time) programming windows and minutes on mass-reach linear networks. • 💳 Exploitation through pay-per-view and/or subscriptions: #WWE (also owned by #TKO) has been the rare example for licensees of successfully rolling up pay-per-view events into flat-fee subscription products (Premium Live Events on #Peacock in the United States and on #Netflix in select international markets), while others mostly failed in their attempt to disrupt this entrenched revenue model for many combat sports and reverted back to add-on charges (e.g. #DAZN). The sell-through approach of primary (subscription) and secondary (pay-per-view) paywalls has worked well for UFC’s numbered events on #ESPNPlus ever since its launch about five years ago and might present the best of both worlds. • 📦 Slicing and dicing for maximum media rights income: Having multiple media rights licensees has become the go-to strategies among tier-one sports properties to lift up license fees — but there are inevitably diminishing benefits (think: watered-down rights packages not having the expected business impact) and increasing costs (think: consumer disorientation and lack of affordability) once programming is spread across too many partners and distribution systems … unless you are the #NFL, I guess. *Complete blank slates are normally limited to new competitions or when intentionally aligning media rights time wise, which can have its own short-term opportunity costs (see: #MLS pooling local, national, and international rights to appeal to Big-Tech) — but then again: (sports) content doesn’t scale globally nearly as easily as everyone thinks, and there remains a point for the traditional market-by-market approach. 🔮 What’s going to happen? Incumbent ESPN (leveraging its tri-cast distribution across over-the-air network and linear cable TV, as well as over-the-top streaming) should be the odds-on favorite, complemented by a streaming-exclusive carve-out around an improved UFC Fight Nights schedule, for which the new industry-darling Netflix might already be penciled in. Under-pressure WBD would have been an obvious fit in a post-NBA world, but would mean moving on from ESPN (and likely the death-knell for ESPN+ as a stand-alone once ESPN Flagship brought its programming over-the-top of traditional TV distributors) and compromise on reach/exposure without an over-the-air network nor 24/7 sports programming channel in place — at least at this stage of the media consolidation cycle. However and wherever the UFC ends up, as the upstream sports rights market will be increasingly locked up for five-plus years in the U.S., most movement within the sports broadcasting market will be in the downstream sports programming market: a lot of 💡innovation, 🤝 cooperation, and 🧲 consolidation to come.

RT @YannickRamcke: From linear to streaming: Does #Netflix play chess while others play checkers? In contrast to traditional pay-TV chann…

From linear to streaming: Does #Netflix play chess while others play checkers? In contrast to traditional pay-TV channels, Netflix was always said to be more interested in one-off (live/sports) events rather than seasonal sports with recurring events on a periodic basis. In that case, Netflix not only saves on production and operational costs**, as well as other expenditures, but can leverage its unique unit economic model, differing from traditional pay-TV's approach which often includes recurring sports events. **which is why the self-contained, fully-produced #WWE shows are such a great product-platform-fit with Netflix. • 💡 Case in point: Big one-off events such as #boxing and #mma went rather behind the pay-per-view wall instead of being thrown into a flat-fee subscription package to earn an ROI. Anyone who tried to disrupt this revenue model, failed (see: #DAZN). Four-week tournaments such as #FIFAWorldCup or the #Olympics, on the other hand, rarely caught the interest of market-leading pay-TV channels for both legal (think: free-to-air protection for events of national interest) and commercial (think: limited post-tournament ability to retain new, rather casual subscribers) reasons. • 📉 Churn as the bane of most streamers’ existence: While Netflix (2-3%) boosts the far-lowest monthly churn rates among all streamers (>5%), it faces an increasingly saturated marketplace which makes new subscriber acquisition close to prohibitively expensive (and which is where sports can increase total addressable market with reasonable customer acquisitions costs). •🫸 Not a fair (streaming) contest anymore? Netflix probably operates already at the optimal frontier of unit economics, since keeping monthly churn rates below 2% is essential for maintaining high CLV. Beyond 5%, the CLV rapidly becomes unsustainable. Below 2%, customer retention costs probably outweigh incremental CLV (despite growing experimentally). Long story short: Without knowing the price Netflix paid (which shouldn’t be above or even close to market rate), it probably delivers a positive business case because it is Netflix (even before accounting for the brand advertiser adoption driven by the FIFA Women’s World Cup).