Podcast #1008: Cinemas are done and possible NFL and Apple Marriage

Are Apple and the NFL close to a deal that will bring Sunday Ticket to AppleTV+? We give our thoughts on a possible deal between the two companies. We also start putting the last nails into TV and cinema operator’s coffins. All of this plus your emails and news await you on this week’s show!

Apple in Early Talks With NFL on Sunday Ticket Games

Apple has expressed interest in the streaming rights for a package of National Football League games the NFL is now auctioning, said people familiar with the situation, a possible sign the tech giant is looking to beef up the audience for its Apple TV+ streaming service. Full article (membership required)

DirecTV's Sunday Ticket deal is due to expire after 2022 DirecTV allegedly pays $1.5 billion a year for Sunday Ticket rights and the NFL is expected to charge even more for the next buyer. Further, DirecTV is said to be losing money on its time holding the rights – up to $2.5 billion. It’s unclear how Apple would approach NFL Sunday Ticket if it did buy the rights, but it’s possible it would be an add-on to the regular monthly Apple TV+ cost. Notably, others interested in NFL’s Sunday Ticket include Disney and possibly Amazon alongside other more traditional media companies.

An argument against this that DirecTV will attempt to renew their contract at all costs  otherwise they will lose millions of business customers (such as sports bars).  But what if the NFL opened up licensing to all, similar to MLB, NHL, and NBA. 

For example you can get MLB extra innings on your cable system or on your AppleTV.  What if the NFL said you can have the package for a split of the revenue or some small nominal amount plus a split of the revenue. Exposing the package to more than just the DirecTV subscribers can bring in way more subscribers and more money for all.

Do you think a sports bar would rewire everything just because it can now use a RokuTV or an AppleTV? DirecTV will make less revenue but it will also cost it much less so it may actually make a profit. 

Android TV shines as pay-TV market declines

Android TV and Huawei’s HarmonyOS are set to dominate the coming years across both the shrinking footprint of operator set tops, and the ballooning number of smart TVs and connected TV (CTV) devices, according to forecasts from Rethink TV.

Pay-TV households will decline from an estimated 921 million in 2020 to 680 million in 2026, impacting the annual shipments of Operator Set Tops, which falls from 242.6 million to 184.8 million, propped up by the upgrade cycle for new Set Top Box operating systems. Full article here...

Harbinger of Death Barry Diller Declares Movies “Over”

“The movie business is over,” Barry Diller, former chairman and CEO of Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox, told NPR in a recent interview. “The movie business as before is finished and will never come back.” Full article here…

He sees streaming as an irreversible alteration of traditional movie success ranging from promotional efforts and accessibility. Marketing a theatrical film is a costly endeavor, particularly when compared to the recommendation algorithms that do much of the heavy lifting for streaming. “There used to be a whole run-up,” Diller said of the pre-release marketing push theatrical films require. Mass marketing provides movies with a sense of event prestige and helps to sustain audience interest in new movies over an extended period of time. “That’s finished,” “These streaming services have been making something that they call ‘movies,’ ” he said. “They ain’t movies. They are some weird algorithmic process that has created things that last 100 minutes or so.”

Our take (which has been our take for a few years)

Movie theaters will be reduced to high end experiences. No more megaplexs that banish five week old releases to small screens in the back of the theater. Now those movies will go to the studios streaming service within a few weeks. 

Some Real world info to back up our claims

According to the site “The Numbers” The US Box office numbers for Black widow put it in 98th place. This 98th place does not include the impact of rising ticket prices. A lot of the movies that beat “Black Widow” debuted many years ago, when ticket prices were a lot lower, and it took a lot more tickets to get there, including “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” which opened in November 2001 and grossed $90 million. At the time, the average ticket price was $5.66, compared to $9.16 in 2019.

Box office info from the weekend: BlackWidow hits over $215M worldwide in opening weekend

🇺🇸 $80M domestic of which 50% goes to the theater operators

🌎 $78M international 

💰 $60M+ Disney+ Premier Access 100% goes Disney

We now have a choice and it's clear that a large percentage of us with big screens want to watch at home!