Author Archives: Chris Broussard

The NFL had a panic-filled season this year, with regards to viewership. In the the first chunk of the season, the NFL saw primetime viewership dive by double digits relative to last year. The league officially blamed the presidential election, but also said it could work on improving things like how much advertising was being served to viewers.One reason might be that the NFL is worried the popularity of streaming services like Netflix, which has a slick interface, tons of portability, and no ads, could push the league out of step with viewer habits.

Source: How Netflix could hurt the NFL – Business Insider

Over the past several months the NFL went from denying there was an issue with its ratings, to admitting there was a “dip” in ratings but it was because of the presidential election, to now blaming Netflix (NFLX).

Whew!

This, we guess, would be good news for Netflix to be considered the NFL killer, but the reality is the issue is much, much more widespread and complicated.

What we see is the NFL sitting right in the crosshairs of the emergence of the Connected Society and Content is King investment themes, and in both cases sitting at the wrong end of the equation. From the Content is King end, the reality is the NFL isn’t providing content that is all that great, and many would argue, it’s providing too much content!  The NFL used to own Sundays and Monday nights. Now it’s on Sunday afternoon, Sunday night, Monday night, Thursday night and then in December it’s on Saturday nights too — nice of them to leave Saturdays for College Football and Friday night’s for high school games!

Of course, our own belief in the problem with the NFL is that fans are no longer fans of teams, but fans of players, and they are the fans of those players on their fantasy football teams. That’s good news for the service providers in the fantasy football space, Yahoo (YHOO) being one of them, but that doesn’t help the networks shelling out the dollars for the billion dollar rights contracts for the NFL.

On the Connected Society aspect, viewers no longer have to sit and watch a 3-hour game — a game with replays and challenges that take forever and having to listen to announcers drone on and one about meaningless aspects of the game or just seem to enjoy listening to themselves talk (we’re talking to you Phil Simms!). They can see all the replays they want on Twitter, get the blow-by-blow by other fans across social networks and then watch the highlights on NFL.com. And then there is the fact that with chord-cutters without network or cable TV in their household, they are flocking to the bars to watch the game they want. Again, good news for the folks at Twitter (TWTR) who very much need some good news these days, but doesn’t help.

Is the NFL past its peak? Doubtful.

But it is very, very likely that we’re going to see a transformation in the viewing experience of all sports, in particular the NFL, given how much money is involved. We wouldn’t count out the current rights holders (Disney’s ESPN, Comcast’s NBC, and Fox), but it is likely that other players are going to emerge and take a major role in the broadcasting of games.

JetBlue has become the first airline to provide free, high-speed Wi-Fi on all flights.The airline announced Wednesday that it will offer its “Fly-Fi” aboard every aircraft—from the departure gate to the arrival gate—so that customers can stay connected without having to wait for the aircraft to ascend beyond 10,000 feet. With Fly-Fi, passengers can watch free movies, stream content from Amazon Video, browse the web, and use messaging apps.

Source: You Can Now Enjoy Free Wi-Fi on Every JetBlue Flight | Travel + Leisure

WiFi in the skies isn’t anything new — it was first introduced in 2007 by AirCell and it’s Go-Go Service with American Airlines and Virgin American. The biggest concern with the service (beyond battery life of the laptop!) was capacity and as such access prices were set by airlines at a point that would hopefully limit passengers from overwhelming the network on the plane, making it unusable.

Flash forward to earlier this week, and JetBlue’s announcement that it would provide free Wifi on all flights to all passengers. Remember, this is the airline that changed in the in-flight entertainment experience offering in-seat DirecTV service for free. Gone were the days of having to watch the one bad movie the airline chose to play followed by sitcom reruns. Might not seem like much, but a 2-hour tarmac delay once on a JetBlue flight from Washington, DC to Boston   made us instant fans!

The move by JetBlue in our view is a reaction to the realities of the Connected Society and Content is King thematics. Gone are the days where passengers watch live TV. Instead, they wish to stream the content they want and binge-watch the hottest program. What could make a flight go by faster than a marathon viewing of Amazon’s new series Grand Tour!

We can’t speak to the economics of this move to the airline itself — we’ll leave that to folks like Frank Holmes, CEO of U.S. Funds and issuer of the JETS Exchange Traded Fund — but in our view it’s good news for content providers, device makers and other players in our Connected Society investment theme as well as Content in King.

Facebook’s media headaches don’t start or end with fake news: With 1.8 billion monthly visitors, Facebook is a media-sharing powerhouse. But unlike the search giant Google or other big networks such as Twitter, Facebook exerts more control over what you see. Those News Feed algorithms are really, really good at getting you to click your way down a comfy rabbit hole. The election exposed how your own personal Facebook burrow — with its echo chambers, fake news and entry points for abuse — may not be a safest place to live.

Source: Facebook is the unwilling king of the news – CNET

Facebook is firmly rooted at the epicenter of the investment theme we call the Connected Society — the intersection of computing, broadband, mobility and the Internet changing the way we live.  There’s no disputing that.

Also crystal clear is the fact that Facebook pretty much controls the flow of news to a large portion of the world. Think about where you heard about the latest political or economic development? What about celebrity news? Or even more impactful, what about your local community news? Usually, it’s through Facebook that many of us are becoming aware of the happenings of the world.

But Facebook doesn’t seem to want to accept that role — or more specifically, doesn’t want to accept the responsibility of that role. By this, we mean the responsibility to curate, ferret out the minutia and keep the public informed of what’s important. What they need to know. What they should know. It’s what the country used to turn to Walter Cronkite, the major newspapers or the evening news on the major networks for on a daily basis.  “Just give me the facts please.”

But here’s the ugly reality — the dilemma that frankly all the “news” entities are dealing with —  facts don’t get people to click.  Facts don’t keep people tuned in. Facts don’t get people to pick up the paper or magazine. Facts don’t get people to share a story on Facebook. The National Enquirer figured that one out a long, long time ago, and Facebook and all of its engineers are particularly well-adapt and presenting stories and images in a way to drive shares, likes and clicks to no end.

Typically, what gets the metrics pumping, are the sensationalized stories. The stories you can’t believe. The behind-the-scenes gossip that everyone wants to know about. Needs to know about! Won’t believe when you find out about!

So if Facebook accepts its role as THE news curator for the world — which is a reason why it also sits in our Content is King thematic, by the way, — then what happens to the user-engagement metrics? What happens to the number of logins, posts, shares, “likes”, clicks?

If the company starts editing out the “fake news” or promoting the “true news” it might be good for the public, but bad for the business metrics. Or a more cynical viewpoint, if users believe Facebook isn’t just curating the facts, but taking a political slant in how it approaches the process (gasp!), then do users disappear altogether and instead go back to their own “social networks”?

These are the things we are sure Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg and the rest of the team at Facebook are struggling with, especially after the latest election cycle.

Can’t we all just share angry cat memes?

After the 2016 election cycle,  and the on going “threat” of Fake News, will people return to trusted sources for thier news? And do those “trusted” sources deserve their trust?

Fact-checking largely didn’t begin until the stories were published. The @solikearose account has since turned private, and there don’t seem to be any reports of porn airing on CNN last night. RCN also released statements on twitter saying there is no evidence that porn was aired last night in Boston

Source: The CNN porn scare is how fake news spreads – The Verge

While a current Presidential candidate might take a disparaging tone when she refers to these “basement dwellers” the world of esports (professional gamers” is starting to rack up some series dollars these days —  $250 million in esports venture investments in August alone.

At Tematica, we’re of course intrigued by the eSports phenomenon when viewed through our he Content is King thematic lens, which looks at the companies providing the entertainment and information that consumers are engaging with these days — whether it’s in the form of broadcast, print, digital, etc. Video games are content and are taking up more and more of hours of media consumption.

But there’s also another interesting component to this and that’s Connected Society, which is our thematic that looks at the interactivity between people through devices, apps and other forms of digital communication. eSports clearly falls into that category given the need to have users connected to one another and competing in real time.

The piece of information in this report from REDEF that really caught our attention was the suggestion that game manufacturers could move away from a per-game fee to a subscription-based fee. So instead of purchasing Madden 17 NFL Football, you’ll just own a subscription to Madden Football and receive continuous updates. Sustainable, repetitive and predictive revenue — we like it! It’s what Tim Cook is trying to do at Apple. Will be interesting to see if it pans out in the gaming world.

One way to acquire and maintain a large active player base is to shift from the business model of making a new game every year to operating these virtual sports as perpetually-updating subscription services. Compared to most games and genres, this model is particularly well suited to virtual sports as the game mechanics of these games tend not to vary tremendously from year-to-year. In general, players are mostly paying for slight graphic updates and new rosters.

Still, serious challenges exist:

These billion-dollar franchises are cash cows for game publishers. Globally, FIFA is the world’s leading virtual sports game and FIFA 16 accounted for 16% of EA’s net revenue ($703 million) in fiscal year 2016. Until necessary, no one at EA wants to shake the treeNo console-focused series has transitioned to digital-first distribution, which would be necessary for the modelThe shift would create a number of complications. What’s the new price? Does the price vary over time? What’s the cost (and blowback) of losing physical retailer support? And s

Source: REDEF ORIGINAL: Why Virtual Sports Games Will Drive the Next Wave of Growth for Esports

This morning, Hulu quietly changed the starting rate for its ad-supported tier of service to $5.99/month (down from $7.99/month). The deal only applies to new subscribers, and increases to $7.99/month after 12 months.

Source: Hulu Drops Price To $5.99, But Only For New Users & Only For 12 Months – Consumerist

It seems like Amazon is reaching the tipping point of world domination. After overhauling the book publishing and distribution world long ago, it’s Amazon Prime service has reshaped the way the world shops online.

Now it appears, they are going after your kids — finally integrating Twitch Interactive into its Amazon Prime video service. What will be next?

Amazon.com Inc. will add video-game streaming features to its $99-a-year Prime membership, expanding its entertainment services while positioning itself to challenge video game console makers Sony Corp. and Microsoft Corp.Amazon Prime members will receive one free channel subscription on Twitch Interactive, the video-game streaming site the Seattle-based e-commerce giant purchased for about $1 billion in 2014. It’s free to watch people play video games on Twitch. Subscribers pay $5 a month per channel to interact with their favorite streamers in chat rooms and get access to emoticons that are a popular method of communicating on the fast-moving site.

Source: Amazon Eyes Living Rooms by Adding Gaming Features to Prime – Bloomberg