cpf2001
Helluva Engineer
- Messages
- 1,379
It’s tough, though. Netflix, Hulu, etc already bundle with various levels of cell phone plans. I haven’t been in a position to see the numbers in a few year, but it was not a terribly big channel in the past. The plans that can afford to bundle are high-margin top-tier ones and those aren’t where the most cost-conscious subscribers go. And the ad take for one of those platforms for a month per user may not even clear ESPN’s traditional carriage charge
The underlying higher investment that demands carriage fees cuts against the need to replenish the eyeballs. Cost of customer acquisition is going up and the ad inventory gets harder to fill at the same rate since ad buyers want to target more narrowly on streaming platforms. ESPN currently is pretty godawful at inventory fill for their streaming stuff, as anyone who’s seen the same 4 commercials twenty times per game knows.
The underlying higher investment that demands carriage fees cuts against the need to replenish the eyeballs. Cost of customer acquisition is going up and the ad inventory gets harder to fill at the same rate since ad buyers want to target more narrowly on streaming platforms. ESPN currently is pretty godawful at inventory fill for their streaming stuff, as anyone who’s seen the same 4 commercials twenty times per game knows.