Blog: Product Strategy - Page 11

Amazon Prime has acquired the exclusive Thursday Night Football (TNF) rights to 15 NFL games, marking a new era for the world’s most valuable sports league. This shift is a giant step towards the normalisation of live entertainment on SVOD platforms as it takes Amazon’s four-year coverage of TNF beyond digital and into exclusive broadcast territory – making the ecommerce platform the only place to view TNF between 2023 and 2033.

A community of Roblox users are losing a battle against moderation as the platform cracks down on music piracy, due to the platform’s newly public status bringing with it a new level of responsibility.

It has been well-documented that Gen Z’s and Generation Alpha’s interest in watching live sports has waned . It is important to dispel the notion that the younger cohorts are less likely to engage with sports, but rather to appreciate that they just consume them differently .

Yesterday was a big day for ViacomCBS. The year of integration and uncertainty following the merger of Viacom and CBS in December 2019 has finally ended. The core rationale behind both key constituents of the National Amusements media empire to join together is now coming to fruition.

On February 11th, Disney released its results for Q4 2020. The focus was on the continuing growth for the media major’s direct to consumer (D2C) business. Although still loss-leading, the D2C segment has halved its operating income losses from -$1.

Building and maintaining cross-generational appeal in entertainment is hard. A key challenge is in catering to seemingly wildly different consumer segments with the inherent risk of targeting ‘kind of everybody’ , which may lead to true fandom with nobody.

The pandemic-enforced prohibition of fans in attendance at sporting events has weakened the viewing spectacle, forcing rights holders and operators to experiment with the viewing experience. The NHL pioneered the drive for change in terms of the viewing format, vying to create a ‘ made-for-TV ’ product for its 2020 Stanley Cup Playoffs.

For decades, rights holders have prioritised (and relied upon) exponentially increasing broadcast revenues as a mechanism for sustainability and growth, a legacy approach that is in dire need of a review with ‘ D-day’ for sporting rights upon us in 2021.

Tech major Amazon is reportedly looking to add to its burgeoning sports right portfolio, targeting the domestic broadcast rights for English Premiership Rugby. London Irish owner, Mick Crossan, confirmed the giant’s entry into the tender process to the Mail on Sunday , following Amazon’s experiment with live streaming rugby after its acquisition and £20 million lifeline for the exclusive UK broadcast rights to last months’ inaugural Autumn Nations Cup .

With both PS5 and Xbox Series X having sold out their pre-order stock, the winter holiday race is heating up. Following Microsoft’s acquisition of ZeniMax Media, we wrote that the acquisition is unlikely to have a short-term impact on console sales, and rather play a larger role in the conversion of existing and new users to Game Pass.

The rollout of Instagram Reels comes cleverly timed, sweeping in the wake of the announced TikTok ban to claim the many app users who will be searching for a new proposition on which to spend their attention.

We have written on the potential of VR in the past , specifically about our concern that gaming VR headsets will not take off en masse, until there is content mix compelling enough to justify device price points.