Cable TV’s survival chances as streaming gobbles up live sports

Simone Del Rosario: Since people first started cutting the cable cord more than a decade ago, there are two facets to live tv broadcasters clung to for dear life. News and sports. Well now every news agency has an online presence, while CNN just announced a streamed version of the network live on MAX. And what about sports? Bad news for linear TV, sports are all over the streaming platforms now. DirecTV lost NFL Sunday Ticket to YouTube, Paramount Plus carries local CBS NFL games, Prime has Thursday Night Football, and that’s just the most profitable league in the U.S. Max started streaming live sports just in time for the MLB playoffs, and now the NBA has a big decision to make, cable or streaming? The broadcast rights expire after next year’s season. How are these trends affecting linear TV dominance? Well, it’s squashing it. For the first time ever, linear tv usage fell below 50%, according to Nielsen data from July.  Are streaming services about to achieve the big pay day that’s eluded them til now? And is it the end of linear TV? Michael Pachter covers Netflix, FuboTV and Amazon as the managing director of equity research with Wedbush Securities. Michael, these broadcast contracts come up every decade or so. NBA to Netflix, do you really think that’s a possibility?

Michael Pachter: I don’t, I don’t think Netflix will ever dedicate enough cash to win those rights. I think unfortunately, all the leagues are looking for maximum dollars. And I think they’re far less interested in reaching the maximum audience. And you know, Netflix will just never pay as much as linear broadcast, that there’s a possibility somebody like, Max, like Warner Brothers discovery would pay that much. But I don’t see Netflix competing at all.

Simone Del Rosario: That’s what I was gonna ask is if there were any other streamers in the mix? I’m curious, because I’ve seen that NBA may want to divvy it up amongst a few bidders? Do you think that that’s an area where streamers are going to be able to compete?

Michael Pachter: I mean, able to sure, you know, Disney can do whatever it wants, and Warner Brothers discovery, who’s debt laden? Already has NBA, right? So they certainly can change how those rights are broadcast. I think the sad thing is that, you know, they’re going to cut out a chunk of the audience, you know, and we have this in Los Angeles with spectrum having the rights to Dodger broadcast, so fewer people necessarily were able to see the team in their home team. It’s really lame, have, you know, Warner Brothers discovery, to think that they’re going to shift broadcast rights from linear television, to subscription streaming service, because you’re going to take away from people who would otherwise watch it, the ability to see that stuff, and then impose a fee. And all that does is exacerbate the issue that they already faced, which is cord cutting. Their lifeblood is not streaming their lifeblood is retransmission fees. And so they suddenly tell me, the only reason I have cable is no longer reason that cable, but they make it very, very easy to cut the cord. So again, I think this is a certainty, I think they’re going to do it. I think they’re immensely stupid. And I think that they’re going to end up just sealing the fate of cable and driving people to cut the cord.

Simone Del Rosario: They being who?

Michael Pachter: They the streamers, so they the guys who have the rights. I mean, again, Amazon and Thursday night football, you know, what, what is served by making Thursday night football only available through Amazon Prime, there’s just a giant chunk of households who have cable TV, and certainly have rabbit ears, you know, so they could watch a game on ABC or NBC, who either can’t afford prime or you know, don’t choose to be prime members. And you know, by definition is probably about 40% of households who lost access to Thursday football, that just stupid, the more they do have that the NFL is going to hurt itself, because it’s going to have fewer and fewer fans. If all of its broadcasts go to streaming, and the NBA is going to hurt itself. I already have a problem with my streaming services, just trying to remember what channel anything I watch is, is odd. And so I predict that all of this stuff is going to end up being consolidated by cable TV, they’re going to see the light, they’re going to say you can’t even get HBO max or whatever it’s called Max. Unless you have a cable subscription. That’s a smarter way to run the business. Disney is not going that way. Disney is trying to split ESPN off as a separate subscription. Really dumb. And again, I think Iger is probably got 100 IQ points on me. He’s a pretty smart man. Really stupid about streaming.

Simone Del Rosario: I’m curious, you brought up the local rights and how it plays into this, do you think that’s going to be linear TV saving grace and that those the cord will never truly be cut off? 

Michael Pachter: Live TV has two things going for it that you really can’t get elsewhere. And that’s live sports, any live sports, and so long as live sports are available exclusively on linear TV, there’s a reason to subscribe. And the second is live events that we care about. So the Academy Awards or American Idol for the Bachelor. And you know each has a different constituency. But you know, I’ve never watched The Bachelor, but I used to watch American Idol and I remember back in the day when we all went to the office. I didn’t want to anybody until We’ve got booted off the night before because I had recorded it. I wanted to watch it the next day. That’s how we feel about live sports as well.

Simone Del Rosario: The Amazon decision to make the Thursday night football deal? Do you think that’s going to be a financial winner for them?

Michael Pachter: Oh, absolutely not. Absolute Zero. They, I think that they’re an interesting company because they only do streaming to reinforce the value of a subscription to something else. So we signed up for amazon for free shipping period. And the only person who churns out of Amazon and quits, is the person who finds that they didn’t buy enough stuff to justify that $120 a year to $10 a month. So if you go three or four months without ordering something on Amazon, you might say shoot, you know, this just isn’t worth it. But if you watch a TV show every month, just one or a broadcast and then FL broadcast. They think that’s enough that you’ll say I can’t give this up. So I think it’s smart for anti churn. But they can produce a lot of content for the price that they’re paying for Thursday night football. I mean, they can produce literally dozens of television shows if they want. I think they’re trying to make a splash. 

Simone Del Rosario: To that end. Is that why you say that? You don’t see Netflix, really ponying up a large amount of money to get into sports because they could use that money to create so much more content?

Michael Pachter: Yeah, I think Netflix might have been leaning that way at one point. But you may remember this they aired a Chris Rock live special last year, I think it was and they’ve made a big deal about it. Like oh my god, tune in Saturday night, nine o’clock Chris Rock, and then you never heard about it again. They never put out any data about how few people actually tuned in by appointment. Netflix is not by appointment TV, period. It is not. It is catch up TV. And it’s antithetical to what Netflix is to its mission to turn themselves into by appointment TV. As you recall, they drop all episodes of every season when the show comes out. And they refuse to move off of that. So why is that important? Because people don’t want to tune in every week to catch the next episode. Hulu is by appointment TV, HBO is by appointment TV, not Netflix. So they’re the last guys in the world that should be doing live broadcasts of anything. And as as dumb as I think everybody in streaming is. Netflix guys are the smartest guys in the room. So I think they are smart enough not to overpay for something that they’re that won’t resonate with their customers.

Simone Del Rosario: So NFL is broadcast agreement doesn’t end until 2033. Going back to this idea that these contracts are so long. I’m curious how you see the streaming and linear landscape a decade from now when those rights are backup.

Michael Pachter: You know, I’m pretty famous or infamous infamous, probably better word notorious for having a sell on Netflix into 2011 and keeping it until 2022. So I was convinced that streaming was a race to the bottom and was convinced Is that either the broadcast guys would shun Netflix and pull their content, or they would try to compete and pull their content. The latter happened, but it didn’t happen till 2019. And it didn’t become obvious till 2021. So I’m making the same kind of prediction here about sports. I actually think in the next 10 years, you’re going to see a reconsolidation of streaming with cable, because I think the the constituents that, you know, lose, which are the the, anybody who is in broadcast, and anybody who creates content for broadcast, are going to figure out that a monthly $100 cable bill, plus an add on $15 for HBO is better than $15 standalone for HBO. I mean, just is there’s $115 in the ecosystem to pay for content, if we keep people subscribing to cable. And even if they replace cable with, you know, 40 or 50 or $60 worth of streaming, there’s less money for everybody to get paid. So I think that the sports leagues are going to figure out that they lose money if that ecosystem shrinks. The money in a consumers pocket is not going to the to the talent that creates the experience. So the NFL is not going to make as much money in studio actors and writers aren’t going to make as much money. So the ultimate solution is a reconsolidation. You know, we all have a cable system with a Netflix button on our remote. That should be automatic. I mean, we should have a Disney plus button. We should have an integrated program guy that helps old people like me figure out what show they were watching and where it is. And we don’t have that right now.

Simone Del Rosario: Michael Pachter Managing Director at Wedbush Securities, thank you so much for your time today.