Regular smartphone video viewers could be a smart target for a subscription sports service
At the end of last year, Verizon relinquished its exclusive rights to the mobile streams of the NFL, enabling the sport to be viewed by US consumers among all operators. The deal gave Verizon non-exclusive rights to mobile streams of the games and is valued at around $2bn for the 5 years. In addition to enabling customers to live-stream games through its TV Everywhere service, Verizon will also make the games available to users of its millennial-focussed service, Go90 as well as streaming a select few on its subsidiary, Yahoo!
Smartphone video viewing is on the rise, in our latest consumer survey of 28,000 respondents across 14 markets in Q3 2017, almost half (48%) of all consumers in said they viewed video on their smartphone on a daily basis, up from 37% a year previous. In the survey, Ampere asks whether sports fans would be willing to pay for a service which included coverage of certain sports competitions; in EU Big 5, daily smartphone video viewers over-index for willingness to pay for all five of the most popular sports competitions, while in the US they over-index for three of the five. This over-index is particularly demonstrated in France, where daily smartphone users over-index by at least 50% across all five of the most popular competitions and for enjoying sport by more than a third compared to a nationally representative sample. Thus, regular smartphone video viewers could serve as a prime target for a sports service covering any of the biggest sports competitions in the EU Big 5, and many in the USA.
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