The company’s AMC Plus streaming service costs just $7/month and in September had 11 million subscribers. The company’s explanation was that it hoped losses to cord-cutting might be made up in streaming, but that didn’t happen. That pretty much describes the company right now.ĪMC’s CEO Christina Spade abruptly stepped down this month after just three months on the job and the company plans to lay off 20% of the people at its five cable networks. Nothing illustrates the dimensions of the crash of streaming stocks as well as the problems at AMC Networks (NASDAQ: AMCX), best known for producing The Walking Dead. AMC Networks (AMCX)ĪMC Networks (AMCX) and its streaming service AMC+ logo on website If an investor is looking for streaming stocks to bet on, so to speak, this type of acquisition could lead to profits in years to come. Disney would offload an arm whose association with gambling hurts its image, while Fubo would get a new “business daddy” with an assured stream of rights. With Fubo’s market cap now down to $540 million, it might be attractive to an acquirer. If Disney wants to jettison ESPN, as has long been rumored, its new owners could grow their business by adding Fubo’s cable offerings to ESPN Plus. Gambling companies like Caesar’s Entertainment (NYSE: CZR) or DraftKings (NASDAQ: DKNG) could add Fubo. But its growth and the commitment of its audience could still be valuable for someone else. With sports rights moving off cable, it’s hard to see how Fubo has a future. Even America’s Major League Soccer has moved to Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL). Paramount bought rights to Europe’s Champions League and Italy’s Serie A for its Paramount Plus streamer. Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) moved its English Premier League coverage to its Peacock streaming service. Disney’s ESPN has ESPN Plus for games it can’t fit on its cable channels. Other sports rights have moved off traditional cable, onto streaming. But that unit was killed in October after the company found it wasn’t financially viable because of high customer acquisition costs. Fubo has been effectively bypassed.Īnother appeal of Fubo was the integration of programming with sports betting. Bally’s has since begun offering its own streaming package at $20/month. The only major streamer to carry the service, DirecTV, now charges an extra $20/month for a tier that includes a local service. When Sinclair Broadcasting (NASDAQ: SBGI) overpaid for Fox’s regional sports cable networks, after Disney acquired Fox’s other entertainment assets, it renamed the channels Bally Sports and hiked their price dramatically. Add in marketing, administration and technology, and the company lost $161 million for the period. Regulators may resist, but when the alternative is bankruptcy, they always give in.įubo’s problem is that because it’s focused on sports, the cost of rights exceeded the subscription revenue. Getting into these streaming stocks as they bottom could provide profit once deals are announced. In 2023 the leading companies will be able to pick-and-choose from among those now trailing in the market. (Alphabet’s YouTube isn’t a paid streamer, but it has about 2.5 billion users, 11 times more than any of the paid services.) Since then no company has been spared, not even long-term winners like Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL, NASDAQ: GOOG) and Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), which should dominate the business that remains. Then Walt Disney (NYSE: DIS) did the same. The setup for this, of course, comes in the form of falling stock prices.įirst Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) fell from grace. Former WarnerMedia (NASDAQ: WBD) CEO Jason Kilar now believes only three streaming platforms will survive the coming merger mania intact. If it surprised you, here’s a second shot at profit. I’ve been writing about a coming streaming crash since 2019. Investors might profit by buying these streaming stocks at their lows, waiting for the inevitable buyout. The industry is about to go through consolidation. This spells trouble for all companies involved in streaming. InvestorPlace - Stock Market News, Stock Advice & Trading Tips However, the amount of ad inventory available quickly overwhelmed the market’s ability to absorb it. As that hope faded, streaming supporters took to promoting the idea of “free” streaming. The hope was that the cable packages of the past might be resurrected online, consumers paying just as much as they formerly did, but paying it directly to programmers. In a world of unlimited content, the limiting factor is time. Streaming stocks and the surrounding industry is learning what those of us on the printed web learned over 20 years ago.
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