Small Streamers Fight For Survival
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Small Streamers Fight For Survival
Some services simply cannot make it on their own.
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Whenever we discuss streaming, there are a few key players to focus on - Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV+. Max is obviously fairly prominent too and offers some fantastic content. However, it is not available globally.
Perhaps the leader in the next tier down is Discovery+. It has a mix of reality TV and sports content, including live coverage of major events like the Tour De France. Here in the UK, it is set to replace the BT Sport app next month, following BT Sport becoming TNT Sport. HBO, HBO Max and Discovery+ have a total of In total, 96.1 subscribers, Variety reported back in February.
Paramount+ and Peacock might argue that they are more prominent standalone services…
To get an understanding of where the various services stand, Paramount+ has 60.5 million subscribers. Netflix has 238 million. Then there are specialist services like ESPN+ and more obscure ones. Do you know about Lionsgate+?! (£5.99, for those who are interested.)
It is, then, all a bit of a mess. Talk of a “rebundling”, whereby some of the smaller services merge with bigger ones, has been going on for a while. We are seeing a bit of that with the way Warner Bros. Discovery is trying to put everything into Max.
Paramount+ can probably survive on being the Star Trek service, at least for a bit. Peacock offers decent originals and, crucially, live Premier League football in the US. But it is hard to imagine that many smaller services will be able to continue without some rebundling. It costs too much to make content and there are too few people subscribing. And then it all looks, and costs, a lot like having a cable bundle…
As consumers, we are in many ways lucky. There is so much great stuff to watch and enjoy at the moment. We have the ability to really drill down and pay for what we want and hit play whenever and wherever we fancy. But the landscape is also very fragmented and shows and movies bounce between services, making it hard for consumers to keep up. Just recently I was in the middle of watching a series (S.W.A.T season one…) and suddenly it was not on my Netflix any more. It had moved to NOW TV.
No doubt we find an equilibrium that balances choice and convenience, but it will likely be the smaller services that lose out when that happens.
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