The Streaming War During the Covid-19 Pandemic Yujin Luo The Streaming War During the Covid-19 Pandemic 2 home, which is the ideal condition for The Covid-19 pandemic has drastically binge-watching. disrupted all business sectors. The arts, culture, and entertainment industries have To understand how the pandemic is shaping been hit exceptionally hard since the virus’ the streaming industry, it is important to first outbreak in January. In response to the understand its pre-Covid and current status. crisis, businesses have taken immediate The following analysis will divide the actions: transitioning to remote work, timeline into before 2020 and in 2020 based canceling and postponing live events on Covid-19’s first outbreak in January nationwide, shutting down entertainment 2020. venues, etc., resulting in lost revenues from sales, merchandising, advertising, and The Streaming Industry’s Pre-Covid promotions. Unfortunately, the Covid-19 State of the Major Players in the pandemic’s impacts are far more Streaming War permanent for an audience-oriented industry that requires a high level of Early adopters and fast followers used to be engagement. The business model might be the main audiences of streaming services, fundamentally changed and there will or in other words, streaming used to be a certainly be a shift in how content is niche add-on to traditional TV. Now, it is produced and consumed. transitioning to a new stage as a mainstream element in the entertainment While lockdowns and social distancing industry. The major streaming services from measures to contain the pandemic have before Covid are shown in the table below, had a huge impact on the traditional movie except for HBO Max, Peacock, and Quibi industry, the video streaming model seems (RIP) that just launched in 2020. to be the greatest beneficiary in this difficult time as people are isolated at Service Company Release Date Subscribers HBO Max AT&T May 2020 4.1 million alone and 36.3 million HBO combined as of June 2020 Peacock NBCUniversal April 2020 10 million as of July 2020 Quibi Quibi April 2020 5.6 million downloads; subscribers unknown Disney+ The Walt Disney November 2019 54.5 million worldwide as of Q1 in 2020 Company Apple TV+ Apple November 2019 33.6 million as of the end of 2019* The Streaming War During the Covid-19 Pandemic 3 CBS All Access CBS Interactive 2014 11 million as of the end of 2019 Amazon Amazon 2011 46.3 million in the U.S.; 150+ million Prime Video worldwide as of January 2020 Hulu Hulu 2010 32.1 million Netflix Netflix 2007 72.9 million in the U.S. as of Q2 in 2020; 192.95 million worldwide *Including users that signed up for one-year free service from Apple Netflix: Netflix, one of the first and biggest acquisitions, as mentioned above, currently players in streaming industry, suffered under the umbrella of Prime Video might some losses in terms of shares and lead to long term control over a majority of subscribers in 2019. According to CNBC, TV streaming content. Additionally, Amazon shares of Netflix fell by more than 10% has gained a lot of attention for its when the company reported a global successful comedy series such as Fleabag subscriber addition of 2.7 million against and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, racking up the forecasted 5 million. They also lost a lot of prominent TV show awards that are more than 100,000 subscribers in the U.S. usually dominated by HBO’s Game of when 300,000 was expected (Mitra, 2019). Thrones. Netflix blamed its content slate and increased prices in some regions for its loss CBS All Access: CBS offers over 30,000 of subscribers. However, Netflix is confident hours of content from Viacom, including it will do better in the future for its effort in Comedy Central, Showtime, and a great original content. number of regional and national content. The current hit series on CBS are Star Trek Amazon Prime Video: Prime was launched originals and Homeland. The CBS streaming on September 7, 2006, and up to this point, service supports all types of devices and is it has been available in a majority of available through different platforms countries worldwide. It offers TV shows and including Chromecast and Amazon Firestick. movies for rent or purchase, as well as a CBS is mainly based in the U.S. domestic selection of Amazon Studios originals and market and rarely touches the international other licensed content. In April 2018, audience. Non-cable users and users Amazon closed a deal with the National outside of the U.S. are very unaware of the Football League to stream every Thursday service and its offerings. night game for the next two years on Prime Video. Amazon also acquired a local sports streaming channel, YES Network, from Disney. Amazon has always been interested in futuristic and long-term growth. Small The Streaming War During the Covid-19 Pandemic 4 Major Media Companies Entering strategy as Apple products. However, it will Streaming take time for Apple to develop its audience base. Disney: In 2019, Disney bought 21st Century Fox for $71.3 billion, which added Fox’s HBO Max: AT&T’s WarnerMedia streaming entire film and TV library—including service, HBO Max, was expected to launch National Geographic Channel, Fox in the spring of 2020 but then was delayed Searchlight, and FX—to Disney’s content to May, acting as the direct competitor to library. Disney now owns an additional 30% Netflix and Disney+. It contains all the stake in Hulu as a result of the merger apart content spread across AT&T’s streaming from the previously existing 30%, bringing platforms, including Friends, which left the total ownership to 60%. Apart from this, Netflix in 2020. In 2018, AT&T acquired Disney also owns ABC television network Time Warner Inc. for $85 billion, uniting all and ESPN Plus. Its streaming platform, its movies and TV shows, and renamed it as Disney+, includes all of Disney’s blockbuster WarnerMedia. This acquisition gave AT&T movies, Disney original content, Marvel, access to all the content produced by Lucasfilm, Pixar, National Geographic, and Warner Bros., HBO, New Line, DC all 20th Century Fox content. Disney’s Entertainment, CNN, TNT, TBS, truTV, The purchase of film and TV assets held by 20th CW, Turner Classic Movies, Cartoon Century Fox gave it access to one of the Network, Adult Swim, Crunchyroll, Rooster biggest movie vaults of all time. As in the Teeth, and Looney Tunes. Apart from this, third-quarter report of 2019, Disney’s WarnerMedia also owns a 10% stake in stocks fell by 3.7% (Palmer, 2019). Disney Hulu which now belongs to AT&T as a result attributed the losses to increased of the acquisition. investments in its streaming services like Hulu, ESPN+, and Disney+. Peacock: Comcast launched Peacock for Xfinity X1 platform subscribers on April 15, Apple TV+: Apple released its streaming 2020, followed by a nationwide roll out on service in November 2019 in the U.S. July 15, 2020. NBCUniversal has plans for an followed by an expansion to more than 100 international release of the service, but no countries. There are currently around 20 timeframe has been announced yet. As the ad-free original TV series with 43 titles in last one to join the streaming war, Peacock development starring celebrities such as was reported to only launch 7,500 hours of Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, J.J. content and wait to release original series Abrams, Octavia Spencer, and Reese until 2021, which is a much lower content Witherspoon, which shows that Apple is volume and slower release speed than its attempting to attract audiences with competitors. Peacock will feature content sterling stars and content using the same from NBC, Bravo, USA Network, SYFY, The Streaming War During the Covid-19 Pandemic 5 Oxygen, E!, CNBC, MSNBC, NBCSN, Golf programming, Disney+ focuses more on its Channel, Universal Kids, A&E, ABC, CBS, The library content with its mass portfolio. But, CW, FOX, HISTORY, Nickelodeon, 42% of households in the U.S. with kids Showtime, Universal Pictures, DreamWorks, under 18 are already subscribed. Only Focus Features, Illumination, ViacomCBS, around 10% of nonsubscribers were likely Paramount, Lionsgate, Warner Bros., and to sign up over the near term (L.E.K., 2020). Blumhouse. In response to the Covid situation, Disney+ has around 100 original shows in It is pretty clear that these major media development since releasing new content is companies know they need to gain power in especially critical for customer retention digital distribution channels to present their when they are watching more than ever. own content. Huge acquisitions by Disney Once consumers have exhausted Disney+’s and AT&T were done with the launch of current library, they might return to Netflix streaming services in mind. or subscribe to new platforms. While new platforms are trying to get a portion of the booming streaming market, Price Competition Netflix remains in its position with the How each service sets its pricing strategy is largest number of subscribers. Research based on its objectives. They could be found out that 58% of subscribers with revenue, profit, or growth. For services like multiple streaming subscriptions considered Apple, streaming can be a way to gain Netflix the least expendable (L.E.K., 2020). customers into their product ecosystem. Even though Netflix increased its price, Disney may be more interested in subscribers still consider the service the generating revenue in merchandise or parks best bang for the buck. It has a solid (Bean, 2019). A study from THR/Morning audience base even with the loss of popular Consult shows four bundles and a range of TV shows such as The Office and Friends.