In a transformative upgrade of its content subscription offering, Google is buying the rights to live Sunday NFL games for $2 billion per year for 2023-2031.
YouTube can leverage its massive reach to challenge existing video aggregators, including pay-TV platforms and Amazon, as a gatekeeper to consumers.
Google will likely deploy a similar strategy in Europe, eventually competing with Sky, Canal+ and other incumbents—a hopeful development for football leagues.
For the media and entertainment industry the dawn of the metaverse, and the word soup of acronyms that accompanies it, is the latest high-profile technology wave that threatens to simultaneously upend established distribution models and reinvent both the experience and relationship with the audience.
Many companies will feel they have been here before. The last 25 years have seen technologies move from linear to on-demand and physical to digital; and devices from fixed, heavy boxes, to always connected and mobile-first. Some companies never recovered from these changes.
The next 24 months is a particularly useful window to invest at small scale and with limited downside risk. With audiences small but influential, there is opportunity to start early, develop robust test cases and establish new community-building and storytelling formats.
The 'enterprise metaverse' is best described as the next generation of communications, productivity, and collaboration tools—with VR/AR the centerpiece of the experience. Big tech is investing billions to bring it to market quickly
Quest 2 VR headsets by Meta have changed the cost equation for VR deployment in enterprise—low-cost headsets already have enterprise demand outstripping supply globally
Microsoft and Meta are closely aligned and co-operating, but Meta has its sights on its own high-value commercial customers and can expect incumbents to fight to retain them
Reportedly, BT Sport is about to seal a deal to extend its coverage of the revamped Champions League until 2027. Amazon is going to step in with a weekly game, and the BBC will get the rights to the highlights.
In France, Canal+ has outbid Amazon to claim the full rights package thanks to a bid that has grown the total value of the rights by 28%.
With Canal+’s football content secured, the upcoming Ligue 1 auction may struggle to find bidders, a fate threatening other short-sighted leagues.
With more clubs, more games and no long Christmas break, the revamped Champions League (CL) will test its value to broadcasters with a tender that has just been released in France, over two years before the cycle begins
UEFA is banking on the rivalry between Canal+/BeIN, the ongoing rights-holders, and Amazon, broadcaster of Ligue 1 in France, and of the CL in Germany and Italy
Prime’s economics point to Amazon sticking to cautious, ‘value’-driven bidding in France. It could expand its limited sports line up in the UK and Spain with the CL, but only if current licensees BT/Warner Bros. Discovery and Telefónica take a step back from 100% coverage
Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard is industry transforming—accelerating the momentum toward global subscription gaming across all devices and becoming an entertainment IP powerhouse.
Activision’s ‘toxic culture’ distress was acute and couldn’t be solved—Microsoft will (and should) clean up a tarnished organisation. The troubles had hammered Activision’s share price, allowing Microsoft to pick up world-class IP at a bargain relative to year-ago prices.
Sony faces a harsh reckoning on its long-term strategy for PlayStation, while EA and Ubisoft have become desirable acquisition targets.
Ongoing supply difficulties for PlayStation and Xbox through 2022 and beyond will result in the install base for the generation being permanently impacted. It raises the question: if you can’t buy a console are they even relevant?
VR will stage a comeback this year, as Quest 2 has its highest sales ever, the category will find new appeal from game (and metaverse) developers. If a rumoured Apple VR/AR headset eventuates, expect white-hot interest
Netflix will make strides in its games service―but mostly behind the scenes to deliver a once in a decade transformation of the industry. Don’t rule out a critical and exclusive mobile hit
Netflix’s decision to launch games as part of the subscription bundle is smart business: rewarding current subscribers, leveraging its IP, and signalling that subscription is the best long-term revenue model in the games space.
Expect technological innovation to be central to Netflix’s ambitions with games. Netflix will make it easier for different game experiences to occur, and ways to attract external developers will inevitably follow.
For Disney, Netflix just made the battle for customers more difficult and more expensive. Disney will need to make hard decisions about how to approach the games business—something it has shown before it finds difficult to do.
In a new chapter of a three year saga, the Ligue 1 awarded eight weekly games to Amazon for the 2021-24 seasons at a rock bottom price of €250 million per year, while Canal+ is left paying €330 million for only two fixtures per week.
Amazon makes a qualitative leap to become the lead broadcaster of a top domestic sport for the first time, probably reflecting more opportunism than a strategic shift.
Canal+ is asking courts to cancel the auction. Based on precedents, we expect the shift to undermine the total market for sport subscriptions.
The pandemic has caused an unprecedented demand boom and revenue windfall for the games industry, allowing developers to ease production bottlenecks, assist remote working, and spend more cash on games that matter.
Producing quality game experiences remotely—from greenlight through to release—has driven innovation and flexibility, and much needed change for game studios.
Most large game developers expect a return to in-studio development late in Q3 2021. Many workers hope a return will not also bring back toxic game production environments.