Skinny bundles are the rage. One way to look at this is that 5 new national cable providers have launched in the past 2 years with a starting price under$40 compared to an average cable bill of $103.
Basic package cost by streaming cable provider:
Hulu Live — $40
DirecTV Now — $35
Sling TV — $20
PlayStation Vue — $40
YouTube TV — $35
NBCUniversal signs deal with TV affiliates for streaming, TV Everywhere distribution
The good news. NBCU is setting a common financial framework so that each broadcast group can easily roll their content into current/future streaming services.
Chart — I posted this on Twitter which shows the pricing difference between the average cable bundle ($103) and the proposed non-sports bundle ($20).
Chart — I posted this on Twitter which shows the amount each network pays per year to air various NFL games.
1.9m dropped pay TV in 2016. This trend is accelerating both in terms of raw number (1.1m in 2015) and as a percentage of total subscribers (2% in 2016 vs. 1% in 2015).
The good news. Streaming services (Hulu, etc.) added 900k subscribers in 2016.
Will HBO see a drop in streaming subscribers now that Game of Thrones is done until at least the end of 2018?
Quote from Glenn Hower — Senior Analyst @ Parks Associates.
“The churn numbers tend to be pretty high, indicating there are a substantial number of consumers subscribing to a service for a short time and then bailing out,”
The Mayweather-McGregor fight was another event that broke through the clutter with an estimated 500k+ U.S. households shelling out $100/each to view the match live.
Other key pay-per-view numbers:
1) $500m from U.S.
2) $200m from outside U.S.
3) $700m in Total
