Wrestling was to be one of the first streaming success stories. In 2018, World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. announced that it had signed up 2.1 million customers to its WWE Network, making it one of the largest paid online video services without the Netflix name.
Now, just two years later, WWE is giving up its own service (in the United States, at least) and selling your rights over Peacock.
It is tempting to see this as a failure of the WWE. Its subscriber base has stagnated and the company has been unable to find a strategy to grow again.
But it is better to see this as the logical evolution of the streaming market in two main ways: the inevitable consolidation of streaming in cable-like packages and the increasingly central role of sports in these offerings.
Gerry Smith has a great piece on the first topic: the fate of niche streaming services. WWE had already signed up the majority of its diehard fans and found it increasingly difficult to stand out in a market for hundreds of services. It is especially difficult when there are at least six players supported by companies worth more than $ 200 billion, offering all types of entertainment.
“The challenge was to grow from where we are,” said Nick Khan, president of WWE, to Gerry. “It’s hard to get people who aren’t fans to try a product when you need to sign up to see it.”
What do you do if you stop growing? It could have branched out into other genres, doubling into an expensive deal in a crowded market. Or you could go back to what you were doing during the cable TV era and sell your shows for the highest bidder.
Peacock comes in. There are at least seven dozen streaming services aimed at being the broadcast networks of the streaming era, offering a little bit of everything for everyone.
Netflix is the absolute leader and Disney quickly established itself as the second largest player. Amazon and Apple exist to remind you of everything else they sell, so your needs are less dire. Although your checkbooks are the largest.
Everyone else – HBO Max, Peacock and Paramount + in particular – needs to give you a reason to pay for a third, fourth or seventh service. A dash of original series and a catalog is not enough. These are table bets.
Expect the three to make live sports a big part of their sales pitch. These events have built-in loyal fan bases that will pay to attend. What’s more, sports is one of the few types of programming that Netflix doesn’t offer.
HBO Max is committed to original films. That will make a difference in 2021, and “Wonder Woman 1984” was the first test. But live sports are coming. WarnerMedia has rights to professional basketball, college basketball and the Major League Baseball.
For Peacock and Paramount +, sport is already one of its few advantages. Peacock was supposed to be released outside the Olympics. While that event was late, Peacock used the English Premier League to attract several of my friends. Now he will switch hockey and other sports from the now defunct NBCSN to Peacock, as well as WWE, which is a kind of sport.
ViacomCBS executives have made similar noise about the importance of sports since this year’s Super Bowl show his recent Champions League deal.
There was a time when it looked like leagues could bypass media companies and sell their own services. But, as WWE just proved, it’s much easier to just sell your rights and let the media companies do the hard part. It’s pure profit for you, and you’re exposed to more people.
The NFL’s goal is to make its games available to as many people as possible. This is difficult to do if you are only available to a smaller group of paying subscribers.
The sleeping giant here, as in all things, is Disney. ESPN has the most robust set of sports rights in the world and is owned by the most valuable entertainment company in the world. ESPN is struggling with the cable’s decline, and its owner has already proven that it can launch a huge streaming service.
For now, it is still worth keeping the major events on TV and not on ESPN +. For a while. – Lucas Shaw
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The biggest sports radio star is launching a podcast
Photographer: Tommaso Boddi / Getty Images North America
Colin Cowherd is starting a new podcast network called Volume. Cowherd will be the owner of the company and will present a new podcast. The network will also feature more than half a dozen programs in total, including a basketball podcast hosted by LaJethro Jenkins and Dragonfly Jonez.
It is a sign of the growing power of podcasts that one of the country’s most popular sports radio hosts is willing to invest millions of his own dollars in his own company. In the past, hosting a radio program was enough. But Cowherd now reaches more people each year with videos on Facebook than with radio, and knows that most listeners under 40 are not tuning in to terrestrial radio or cable TV, which still pay their bills.
“We are in a world on demand,” said Cowherd last week, speaking via video conference from his Manhattan Beach home. “You can make comments in real time now without barriers. I don’t have to drive to a studio, I don’t have to put on makeup and be miked. “
Market-based capitalism had a good run
The GameStop saga was the story of the week, and also a classic case in which the narrative went beyond the facts.
First, the facts. The company’s shares were trading at about $ 4 last July. It quadrupled to $ 17 a share in January, a modest total by this week’s standards. It peaked at $ 483 per share on Thursday, before dropping to $ 112.25 on Thursday and rising again to $ 325 at the end of the week. Altogether, it is worth about 80 times what it was six months ago, without any change in the fundamentals of the business.
The narrative: amateurs dropped hedge funds! Trade will never be the same.
Although some hedge funds have suffered, many professional investors did very well. Private equity firm Silver Lake Partners made more than $ 100 million in trading in AMC’s stock boom this week.
But don’t worry about my opinion on this. I work with many people who are stock market experts, which I certainly am not.
Sundance 2021 is a sellers market
The most prestigious film festival in the United States began this week in a decentralized virtual edition. I saw my first film at home on Friday night, “On the Count of Three”, the directorial debut of Jerrod Carmichael.
While it’s easier to get carried away when you’re sitting in a theater, I’d expect the sales market to be quick. This can be counterintuitive; who buys movies when theaters are closed?
But more traditional distributors will buy movies and deposit them at the bank by the end of the year, while all streaming services are still looking forward to new products to attract customers. Netflix, Amazon, Apple, HBO Max and Hulu can go shopping. Neon has already acquired “Flee”, an animated documentary, and Apple paid a record $ 25 million for “Coda”.
Peak TV peaked
The number of TV shows with an original script released in 2020 dropped to 493, down 7% from the previous year. The pandemic has suppressed production, but that can also be a tipping point as linear TV networks shrink.
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Weekly playlist
Arlo Parks. Run, don’t walk. This 20 year old British singer has just released her first studio album, “Collapsed in Sunbeams”, and is “almost perfect” if a a little depressing.