Welcome to the latest installment of Dan Rayburn's Streaming Insights & Intelligence, a weekly insights column on StreamTV Insider where the industry analyst puts facts and figures to the news you need to know about. Join the discussion on LinkedIn and check back each week as he unpacks key industry happenings.
For the week of September 18, 2024, Rayburn is tracking Quality of Experience considerations, Venu Sports antitrust trial, Prime Video's Thursday Night Football viewership and Nielsen’s murky methodology and more.
Quality of Experience (QoE) for all?
For OTT services, the largest content streamers now serve around 40-80 million subscribers in the US every month. Outside of Netflix, they rely on third-party CDNs to deliver all or nearly all of their video. Delivering this content requires a high threshold of HD or better video quality, high bitrates for viewing on large screens, immediate player startup, no buffering, and zero dropped packets during the stream. In other words, a consistently high Quality of Experience (QoE) for end users and that’s magnified even further when streaming live events. On average, for 90-95% of their subscriber base in the US, third-party CDNs provide enough data to measure QoE so that streamers are, for the most part, confident their content is being delivered with an optimal experience. But what about the other 5-10% of their audience?
Read the full blog post here.
Trial start set for Fubo vs Venu Sports antitrust case
Disney, WBD, and FOX's motion for an expedited hearing appeal on the Venu Sports injunction has been granted. Disney/WBD/FOX's opening brief is due September 20, 2024. Fubo's response brief is due November 4, 2024, followed by Disney/WBD/FOX's reply brief, due November 25, 2024. The order says that "the appeal shall be heard as soon as practicable following completion of briefing," so it is possible there could be a ruling on the injunction by the end of November or soon after.
FuboTV's antitrust trial against the launch of Venu by Walt Disney by Disney, FOX and WBD, is set to begin on October 6 of 2025.
Amazon Thursday Night Football viewership, Nielsen’s murky methodology
Amazon says the opening Thursday Night Football (TNF) game on Prime had an average audience of 14.9 million viewers. Amazon confirmed the numbers are AMA (Average Minute Audience), even though Nielsen doesn't use the word "minute" anywhere in the press release. The figures are from Nielsen's panel-only measurement and do not include their Big Data + Panel metrics.
Nielsen does not provide the methodology for classifying a "viewer" and to date, has not been willing to answer how they track viewership when the stream auto-loads on the Amazon website and in the carousel on the Fire TV platform. Are users counted as viewers if they don't interact with the video? Do they have to keep the stream going for a certain length of time before they count as a viewer? Nielsen purposely won't say since their methodology would cause the viewer numbers to be much lower. Nielsen = zero transparency, but companies use their numbers in the absence of a better solution in the market.
EverPass Media deal brings TNF to commercial locations
Thanks to a new agreement announced with EverPass Media, Thursday Night Football games on Amazon Prime Video are now available to watch at bars and other commercial establishments. This agreement complements previous content partnerships that EverPass Media has landed, such as those for NFL Sunday Ticket and Peacock.
Dan Rayburn is an analyst in the streaming media industry, with regular TV appearances on CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and Schwab Network amongst others. He is conference Chairman for the NAB Show Streaming Summit in Las Vegas each year, and his streamingmediablog.com website is one of the most widely read sites for broadcasters, content owners, OTT providers, Wall Street money managers, and industry executives. He also has a podcast at danrayburnpodcast.com. He can be reached at [email protected]
Dan Rayburn’s Streaming Insights & Intelligence is an opinion column. It does not necessarily represent the opinions of StreamTV Insider.