Collusion Among the Streaming Services?

Yesterday I mentioned that egg producers may be colluding again as they were recently found guilty of doing from 2004-2008. I’m starting to feel the same way about the streaming services.

YouTube TV and Hulu in particular give me the collusion vibe. The two platforms share a monthly price in common and offer similar content, although I would argue that Hulu’s offering is a better value.

What do consumers receive in exchange for higher prices? Constant price hikes without a commensurate increase in quality content feels like the old playbook the Cable companies used to run with linear TV, namely, drive the price curve higher to offset content acquisition cost increases but offer the consumer nothing incremental in return.

Unbundling live sports. I expect things to get interesting when consumers have the ability to purchase standalone sports packages - particularly college football and the NFL - which are the big drivers of sports revenue in the United States. To date streaming services have bundled live sports with other content. As linear TV goes away, I expect streaming content bundles to fragment, thereby offering customers more choice.

The NFL holds the most leverage on the content production side. The problem is the NFL does not have the right person leading the league when it comes to the remote viewing experience and how people will consume NFL content 5-10 years from now and what that means for content licensing deal structure with the large platform players. The NFL’s deals with Amazon and YouTube/Google ought to have occurred 10 years ago as an example and the idea ought to have been pushed by the league.

• Here’s a bit on the various streaming services. The Excel version is available for premium subscribers below the paywall.

Source: TEK2day