First came the failed Venu Sports joint venture. Then came the Comcast and DirecTV sports packages and, most recently, a ESPN Unlimited/Fox One bundle. “Despite all these attempts at capturing sports fans with a compelling, slimmed down streaming service, we thought YouTube TV – the largest vMVPD – was best positioned to launch its own skinny bundle for sports fans after successfully negotiating the flexibility to offer genre packages in its recent affiliate deals,” notes MoffettNathanson Senior Analyst Rob Fishman.
Wish granted. Details have arrived from YouTube TV about how the Google-aligned entity plans to attract both “cord cutters” and those who have never had a cable TV services bill.
First, there’s a higher “headline price” of $65 per month.
Then, there’s the biggest surprise to Fishman and his team: the number of additional channels included in YouTube TV’s Sports Plan.
“Are these prices low enough to lead to spinning down from existing YouTube TV subscriptions or other MVPDs?” he asks. “Can YouTube TV bring cord-nevers and cord-cutters back as new subscribers?”
Initial messaging led MoffettNathanson to believe this could be the skinniest possible sports only vMVPD, with all the broadcast networks, ESPN’s suite of networks (including ESPN Unlimited content) and maybe a few others.
In reality, the list of channels includes most of the other sports networks like FS1, FS2, and NBC Sports Network plus all the league-owned channels and hybrid sports channels like TBS, TNT, truTV and USA.
And while MoffettNathanson does not yet have details on pricing for a standalone News Plan — or if there will be in fact be one — Fishman says that adding the news channels to the Sports Plan will cost another $7 per month, taking the total to $72 “for a very comprehensive list of live networks covering sports and news.”
Fishman concludes, “While we initially expected YouTube TV to be even more aggressive with its pricing, we remain excited to see how the new skinny bundles scale as the company puts the weight of its marketing machine behind the new offerings.” He also believes YouTube TV “has a big opportunity to crack down on password sharing to further accelerate its subscriber momentum. As current YouTube TV subscribers ourselves, we look forward to spinning down to the Sports Plan – and maybe the Sports + News Plan – soon!”
