Blog: Churn

The ‘COVID-bounce’ effect from the 2020 pandemic created a business windfall for many video providers and OTT services – some of which saw multi-year subscriber increases happen within months. Video experienced the biggest bump in engagement and will be doubly impacted as the rebound to ‘in real life’ and pre-pandemic activities continues.

WWE’s Q3 2020 results provide a fascinating insight into how a live event-focused entertainment business has successfully navigated a global pandemic. In its financials for the quarter , WWE saw a 19% revenue increase year-on-year (YoY), with Q3 2020 revenue at $221.

Australian pay-TV organisation Foxtel is launching a free version of its sport-centric streaming service Kayo in 2021. This follows a difficult year for the streaming service that saw its subscriber numbers recover to over 600,000 after suffering a significant decline following the initial COVID-19 outbreak.

DAZN’s recently-established position as the ‘Netflix of sport’ has been a hard fought one, requiring extensive rights investment in order to carve out a compelling proposition. In the markets where it has the best rights it has experienced the strongest adoption, with the converse equally true.

English Premier League (EPL) clubs have agreed an ‘interim solution’ to allow fans to continue watching their teams live. EPL fixtures not selected for broadcast in October will be available to fans on a pay-per-view (PPV) basis.

Last Friday , European Professional Club Rugby (EPCR), the Heineken Champions Cup and the European Rugby Challenge Cup’s governing body announced the launch of its global over-the-top (OTT) streaming service, epcrugby.

DAZN’s 2018 financials highlighted the difficulty of encouraging a transition to consume live sports digitally with its existing portfolio of rights. DAZN has not yet released its 2019 financials, but MIDiA has constructed a robust and accurate subscriber and revenue model for the sport-centric streaming service which will be published in full as part of our DAZN Financials and Subscriber Deep Dive report.

With COVID-19 exposing the vulnerability of pureplay sport streaming services , the importance of building out a robust and downturn-proof offering is fundamental to the viability of these currently additive services.

Sports streaming insurgent DAZN has announced last week it plans to inform rights holders of its intent to defer its payments of rights fees for any content not yet delivered (i.e. postponed / cancelled games) during this pandemic-enforced freeze on live sports.

Monday saw another solid Netflix earnings call as the preeminent subscription video on demand (SVOD) service continues its seemingly inexorable rise to global dominance. Year-on-year (YoY) revenue growth was an impressive 40.