☀️ PAR Revenue Stalled, What Lies Ahead For SKYDANCE
TKO outlines boxing plans / SONY, WB team up in Vegas / PAR+ gets biggest premiere yet
Mornin! This is Sean McNulty (connect with me on LinkedIn here if ya like), and here’s the Hollywood + Media news to know on THURSDAY, February 27, 2025.
Where for an industry oft decried as old and lacking new ideas — Hollywood does still seem to be #BigTech’s go to for, uh, “inspiration” . . . as our badass “+” branding is now entering AI!
Meet ALEXA+ from AMAZON, powered by ANTHROPIC (which counts AMAZON as a major investor). So no more just asking ALEXA about the weather and to play only Janet Jackson songs for you — it can now do things like order your groceries and send Evites to people for IRL parties that you don’t have anymore because everyone doesn’t want to leave their houses.
#BigTech is also picking up on your new approach to pricing too, Hollywood — ALEXA+ will be available for the low, low price of $20 a month, although it’s free for PRIME members.
Granted that $139 AMAZON PRIME price point hasn’t had an adjustment since April 2022, and the PRIME VIDEO product has a nice new big NBA check coming end of year and locked in that annual NFL WildCard game too, so, well, keep an eye out.
BTW: Hollywood isn’t giving up the “+” battle without a fight — DISNEY+ is now launching a SC+ (SportsCenter+) daily edition at 9 a.m., starting on Monday — although the format is more a “Top 10 stories of the day” kinda thing that’ll be around 15 minutes . . . vs. a full hour-ish of around-the-horn sports highlights, and is U.S.-only.
OH: If your IG REELS feed was overrun with extremely violent videos last night (or your kids — minors’ feeds were affected as well), don’t worry — it was just an internal “error” on META’s end. Same thing happens on NBC all the time.
AND: MrBeast is looking to raise a couple hundred million 💰 for his outfit at a valuation of $5B. Yes, billion. The business claims it’s profitable (across all of its lines — YT, AMAZON show, CPG, etc) and generated about $400M in sales in 2024. (Note that Beast told TIME a year ago that his businesses made between $600M and $700M annually and he’s been telling people that he lost “tens of millions” on the AMAZON show, so take this as ya like.)
Just some comps to keep in mind here:
A24 was most recently valued at $3.75B.
SKYDANCE was valued at $4.75B in July as part of the PAR deal.
SHAKE SHACK is at $4.7B.
REST IN PEACE: Certainly a pretty sad 24-hour news cycle at the moment — first was of course was the news of Michelle Trachtenberg’s death at the age of 39 in NYC yesterday, but then also that Gene Hackman died along with his 63-year-old wife, Betsy Arakawa, and their dog in Santa Fe as their bodies were discovered by authorities yesterday afternoon. All definitely a reminder to make the most of the day in front of you.
HOUSEKEEPING: I’ll be doing a special “Lunch Hour” edition today with what’s going on at WBD. Zaz’s comments were certainly rather concise this morning, and no opening comments from the CFO. 👀
IN THIS EDITION
Take a look at the PAR Q4 and 2024 numbers, as well as some larger important trends around overall revenue and profitability — what lies ahead for SKYDANCE when (🤞) they get the keys, and some ideas about a way to turn the narrative here.
TKO jumped further into the boxing ring yesterday — see what management has in the works.
AMAZON creates a (somewhat) weekly YANKEES night in the NYC area, PAR+ sees a bit debut and much more.
💻 THE MEDIA BIZ
