Reports: recession

The slowing of subscription growth in developed markets means that streaming services have to look both towards post-subscription and post-advertising models. A focus on retention will maintain downward pressure on subscription price elasticity, compounded by the need to ration advertising loads to minimise churn.

The combined effects of market saturation for subscription video on demand (SVOD) alongside a growing cost-of-living crisis are forcing pureplay SVOD services to modify their ad-free propositions. Disney-owned Hulu has demonstrated the viability of an ad-supported SVOD basic plan, which now offers a blueprint for Disney+ and Netflix.

Audio platforms traditionally monetise through advertising and, to a lesser degree, listener subscriptions. However, with the rise of the creator economy and more creators entering the podcast space, platforms must bulk up their offerings for creator monetisation as well.

In this report MIDiA Research analysts present their predictions for what will be the big trends in digital media and tech across music, video, brands, marketing, games and sports in 2021 and beyond. Companies and brands mentioned in this report: Amazon...

COVID-19 caused dislocation and disruption to the global entertainment business. Now, the recession and the prospect of further pandemic peaks have created an unprecedented outlook for entertainment companies. Many of the shifts that occurred during lockdown will define the new market dynamics.

As part of MIDiA’s research stream focused on how COVID-19 is impacting the entertainment industries, this report explores how the combination of lockdown measures and the coming recession will impact music industry revenues in 2020.

The postponement of annual competitions and major quadrennial events has highlighted just how heavily pay-TV and sport-centric streaming services’ value propositions rely on live sports. Filling schedules with re-runs, docuseries, interviews and archived footage are stopgaps unlikely to increase engagement.

Brands have an ongoing engagement problem. No matter how much data they use or how targeted they go, competition is fierce, consumer attention is saturated, and all usage comes at the expense of time spent elsewhere. With the ubiquity of advertising, brand choices are as much a personal statement by the consumer to their peers as a testament to trust and loyalty in a company.

Following our first COVID-19 impact report, this report deep dives into how media consumption patterns have changed in the initial weeks of COVID-19 dislocation. While it is crucial to remember that these behaviour shifts are a snapshot of a unique moment in time, there are nonetheless some that will persist post-pandemic.

The spread of COVID-19, and the responses of industry and governments alike, is unprecedented. It is, however, the restrictions on movement of people along with the response of consumers and investors that is causing the biggest disruption and will have the most impact on entertainment businesses.

Even before the global coronavirus outbreak, faltering confidence in the global economy suggested that a recession may be looming. With stock markets trending down following the upswing in coronavirus cases, the chances of a global recession are rising.

Sports as a product is feeling the squeeze of the peak attention economy. Sports fans in the traditional sense are ageing, and appealing to a younger digitally-native audience is a fundamental issue that rights holders can no longer ignore. Sports rights holders have realised the importance of their virtual (gaming) counterparts, acknowledging that they are taking much of the attention of a large proportion of their fanbases, but also nurturing expected future fans who do not interact with the real-life version of sports.

Measuring streaming sports audience engagement is paramount when determining which rights mix consumers are actually willing to pay for. Netflix has shown that in a saturated market, retaining consumer attention can cost twice as much as it did previously to retain the same level of user engagement.

Ten years on from the credit crunch, the global economy could be poised to enter another economic recession. Many of the underlying causes of the credit crunch remain in place, due to governments lacking the appetite for the structural reform required to right the faults in the global financial system that catalysed the slowdown.