☀️ SPOTIFY Rebound Offers Lessons, Hope for Hollywood
A24 movie deal / Comps on YOUTUBE’s Growth / AMC Theaters restructures debt
Mornin! This is Sean McNulty (connect with me on LinkedIn here if ya like), and here’s the Hollywood + Media news to know on WEDNESDAY, July 24, 2024.
Where I think VERIZON is now officially subsidizing half of the streaming economy.
Much has been written about its heavily discounted free NETFLIX add-ons to streaming deals, and #BundledSolutions pairing various streamers together in deals . . . but next is uh, free NFL!
Yes, new subscribers who sign up for certain bougie tier plans, or existing ones who upgrade / add plans will get free NFL Sunday Ticket, a value of about $450.
Sadly, there is still no option where VERIZON just takes $37.50 off of your monthly bill instead.
AND: Sorry social media and TV — credit card companies are turning to the gaming sector to advertise with, and find growth. An XBOX credit card, anyone?
THEN: AMAZON PRIME VIDEO is rolling out a new UI, which uses generative AI to help you find something to watch more quickly. So, get ready for a lot of I, Robot referrals.
BTW: Salt Lake City officially got the 2034 Winter Olympics. Hopefully the lake is still there by then. 🤞
ALSO: The WNBA got 3.44M viewers for its excellent All-Star game on ABC Saturday, the 3rd biggest TV audience for the league in its history. The only other 2 games to get a bigger audience were the league’s first 2 games ever.
All-Star comps:
NHL game: 1.4M
WNBA game: 3.4M
NBA game: 5.4M
NFL flag football game: 5.8M
MLB game: 7.4M
Again, the WNBA is getting about 4% of the TV rights money that the NBA is getting in its next 11-year deal — its reported $260M-ish a year (eventual) deal has an out to renegotiate in good faith after 3 years according to The Athletic.
Basically — if this newfound WNBA ratings success continues through 2026 (and the league gets larger playoff audiences vs. the regular season), women’s hoops could make a real 💰 leap forward to join the more “major” U.S. sports in 2027.
As a rough existing comp, the NHL gets about $625M a year in TV rights fees, and the WNBA TV audiences are consistently either of similar size or bigger this year — granted the NHL has a far greater volume of games and playoff rounds, but not to the tune of 2.75x of its rights payday.
The PREMIER LEAGUE gets $450M from NBCU — again, it has a higher volume of games, but the WNBA is also achieving similar and sometimes bigger TV audiences for its games so far this year.
MLS gets $250M a year from APPLE TV+, but got nowhere near the TV ratings of the WNBA this season when it was on FOX and other outlets.
Some MLS games are still on FOX, and get smaller audiences than the WNBA this year.
BTW: MLS has its All-Star game tonight on its APPLE TV+ MLS Season Pass subscription, a game which . . . was not mentioned in any sports industry newsletters I read this morning.
REST IN PEACE: Goes out to longtime agent Don Buchwald, founder of the agency now simply called BUCHWALD, who died this week at the age of 88.
IN TODAY’S EDITION
SPOTIFY has found success by returning to what it does best — a look at how this both reinforces what Hollywood has repeatedly shown it uniquely does best, and what it could nod to as a way forward in this post-streaming bubble era.
A24 keeps spending . . . adding a new project, and look back at a very active last 4 weeks.
Dive into the YOUTUBE revenue comps to note, plus GOOGLE’s great attention to AI in Q2, and much more.