SME #4: Predictions, Favourite Streamers, Must Watch TV Series, here comes the top 2022!
Streaming Made Easy #4
Welcome back to Streaming Made Easy. This week, I’m in Christmas mode already 🎄 and the holiday season brings me the joy of doing top 5 lists of things I loved. It’s a bit of an obsession. See for yourself!
Today at a glance:
Thought: 5 Predictions about the Media & Entertainment industry in 2023
Streamer snapshot: The 5 Streamers I watched the most this year
Content Recommendation: My 5 TV series to put on your To Watch list
💡 Thought:
I’ve always read others’ predictions and thought: how brave or insane of them!
Well this year, I’m giving it a go for the 1st time with the help of Zoltar (remember him from the Tom Hanks movie “Big”?!).
OK let’s go:
Prediction n°1: Netflix will get into live sports without buying sports rights
Reed Hastings said it: “We’ve not seen a profit path to renting big sports, we’re not anti-sports, we’re just pro-profits”. You gotta love that quote.
In 2023, Netflix won’t buy major sports rights but it doesn’t mean they never will (e.g. they said they would never have ads…). Instead, I believe they will first dip their toe into sports. Here’s how:
Continue to invest in producing sports docu-series (“Drive to survive”, upcoming “Break Point”) or movies (“Hustle” was hands-down one of the best basketball movies I’ve seen in years).
Build a sports hub / section in the UX. It would help declutter and boost discovery if they were to design a dedicated section to sports related content.
Livestream a sports event or two in partnership with a fellow OTT platform (e.g. DAZN would be a good fit).
Bundle Netflix with DAZN in key European territories (e.g. Germany, Spain, Italy where DAZN is strongest).
Now these may not move the needle in terms of retention or customer acquisition, but it could act a test and learn phase.
Prediction n°2: European Telcos & Pay TV providers will launch FAST hubs
A major difference between the US and Europe is that, for now, cord-cutting and CTV penetration haven’t taken the region by storm. When it comes to FAST, the growth in the US is led by CTV platforms. For FAST to take off in Europe in a meaningful way, we will need to see Telcos and Pay TV providers launch FAST channel hubs.
Initially, they were uninterested but in Q4 interest grew. Several players are either investigating the space or preparing to launch in 2023.
When they do, it will make a major difference in the engagement metrics. Why? Because Telcos and Pay TV providers excel at aggregating and promoting TV channel packages. FAST is just the streaming version of that.
Prediction n°3: Samsung TV Plus will make a major investment
Samsung has the Roku playbook on its nightstand. They used to make hardware for themselves and that was it. They then opened Tizen (their operating system) to third-party manufacturers, launched Samsung TV Plus with licensed FAST channels and now they build their own & operated FAST channels. Essentially, software > hardware moving forward.
My guess is that the technology in the background is playing catch up though. You don’t build the tech stack to run a platform like Samsung TV Plus overnight. They could continue building it or buy the tech (an integrator, a supply-side platform, an analytics stack etc.).
Another investment could also take the form of a production company like Roku did with “This old house”.
Prediction n°4: Viaplay or Amazon will buy Salto
Last week’s newsletter focused on the upcoming sale of French Streamer, Salto.
I had Amazon as a likely buyer but I recently thought Viaplay could be a good fit too. France is the one market in Europe where they haven’t announced plans yet. An acquisition could be the way to go, like they’ve done with Premier Sports in the UK.
Prediction n°5: Apple will buy Roku
Here’s why:
They have the money and no profitability challenges unlike other streamers.
Expensive sports rights (MLS, NFL) require scale. In the TV ecosystem, Apple TV and Apple TV+ aren’t big enough as it is. Roku would solve this in a big way (65.4M active accounts in total, with the biggest % of users coming from the US).
Speed up the creation of their ad business.
SVOD marketplace: Apple is best positioned to become the super bundle destination, yet they haven’t focused much on it and only carry a handful of SVOD services. The Roku Channel’s line up is comparable to Amazon Channels’ one.
Let’s check in a year’s time to see how off or not I was 😁
📺 Streamer snapshot:
I must admit, I’m quite the SVOD stacker (5+ subscriptions). I hop from one app to the other to watch the latest and the greatest.
This year, here’s the ranking of my favourite streaming services:
N°5 - Apple TV+
I had Apple TV+ as part of my iphone purchase. I enjoyed “Ted Lasso” and a couple of others and then I cancelled it. I signed up again this summer as part of another bundle promotion (with my Samsung TV) and the upcoming releases of “Bad Sisters”. I love Sharon Hogan and was curious about this adaptation of the Belgian show “Clan”. Since then, I watched many more shows like “WeCrashed”, “Slow Horses” or the new season of “Mythic Quest” and going into 2023, I’m game to stay, bundle promos and stellar content did the work.
N°4 - HBO Max
After years of watching HBO content through French Pay TV Channel, OCS, I was frustrated here in the Netherlands. I needed my HBO shoot. I could have gone to Ziggo (who had the rights to HBO titles) but by the time I moved to Amsterdam, I had cut the cord completely.
I signed up the week of their launch in March 2022 and caught up on great shows like “Hacks”. These last few weeks, I must say they’ve impressed me with the quality and diversity of movies they bought from 3rd party licensors. It’s a tight but excellent selection, sign that quality trumps quantity.
N°3 - Netflix
It’s been on and off between Netflix and me this year. I clearly felt a drop in interest for their new releases but we kept the subcription as it does feed the entire’s family thirst for content (that’s one of their superpower, they almost became a utility to many, didn’t they?). As always, they finish off the year with amazing content making me keen to stay too: “Hustle”, “The Queen” S5, “Wednesday”.
N°2 - Disney+
Here again, I had cancelled my subscription in 2021 because the library wasn’t deep enough and was lacking content for adults. It’s been a great destination this year for family and feel good movies of course, a couple of new theatrical titles and most importantly tier 1 shows like “The Dropout'“, “Only murders in the building” etc.
N°1 - MyCanal
French MVPD, Canal+, is my 2023 winner. It’s the one subscription I can’t live without. Why?
3 reasons:
Content diversity: premium fresh movies, great TV series acquisitions & stunning originals, major sports events. You can go further by adding their Movies & Series add on package which includes Netflix, Disney+, Lionsgate+, OCS, Paramount+
Editorial: The curation is powerful. It’s a mix of standard categories (movies, series etc.) but also thematic rows (“You wanna a laugh?”, “Two to tango”, “Mafia family”; “Under pressure”) or pop up rows (for the release of a new show, there’s a takeover of the entire row, often in a very funny and compelling way). Their editorial approach could teach a thing or two to Global Streamers.
UX: Super easy to navigate and discover content. I particularly liked the multi-cam experience around F1 races (just like F1 TV does).
🎬 Content recommendation:
If you follow me on Linkedin, you know I watch a LOT of content (movies, TV series, documentaries). Check out which TV series made the cut in 2022:
N°5 - “Abbott Elementary” - Disney+
N°4 - “The dropout” - Disney+
N°3 - “Le monde de demain” (“Reign Supreme”) - Arte/Netflix
N°2 - “Hacks” - HBO Max
N°1 - “Chair tendre” - France Télévisions (on Disney+ in 2023)
For the 1st time in years, two French TV Series made my Top 5. Both were produced by French Broadcasters, then picked up by Streamers.
What does that tell us?
France has what it takes to make esthetic and thought-provoking shows in very different genres (the birth of hip hop in France for “Le monde de demain”; the story of an intersex teenager struggling through high-school “Chair Tendre”).
It also shows how Global Streamers rely on local broadcasters when it comes to featuring local content on their platforms. However powerful they are in their home market, they’re still in their early days when it comes to building relationships with the local creative communities. TV channels know a thing or two about the space.
Anyway, I can’t recommend enough watching Chair tendre, it’s not easy especially as a parent but how moving to see the relationships between friends in high school, 1st love, and family ties going through rocky moments.
That’s it folks. I hope you found this interesting and if you did, please don’t hesitate to tell your colleagues, bosses, friends & families about it.
Enjoy your weekend and see you next Friday for another edition of Streaming Made Easy!
At night, I write Streaming Made Easy and post each working day on Linkedin.
By day, I run The Local Act, a streaming video consultancy.
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