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Last week I posted an article here on the site covering the current state of affairs in the streaming wars, and where things may be headed. You can check that out here.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the issues I covered was the enormous amount of money NBC\/Comcast had recently signed on to secure even more sports rights to their lineup, the biggest recent additions being the long-awaited return of the NBA as well as Sunday Night Baseball from MLB along with the wild card round of baseball’s postseason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I mentioned how the math didn’t really add up, as I stated Peacock has almost always been a loss-leader<\/a> to put it very mildly, it’s been hemorrhaging money for most of its existence, only just posting its first profitable quarter in last week’s earnings report. Comcast spun off its cable channels into the new company Versant, and they have since announced plans to spin off the network and streaming into its own company as well, a separation expected to be completed by mid-2027. Leaving Comcast as a broadband and telecom provider, basically washing their hands of the streaming and television money pit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A story broke this morning that Peacock Premium (with ads), will be included with<\/a> a YouTube Premium subscription. To those unfamiliar with YouTube premium, it is the paid version of YouTube (it has nothing to do with YouTube TV which is their version of cable TV) that doesn’t include ads. As someone whose most used streaming app for well over a decade (probably two decades) has been YouTube, I am a long time subscriber of YouTube Premium. I used to use a different email every one to three months to get free trials of it, this went on for about four or five years. Then they began enforcing that more strictly, so I used a still active college email address to lock in the student discount rate, it’s been in the range of around six to eight dollars a month the last few years for me. But it gives me access to everything on YouTube commercial free. I use YouTube to follow podcasts, a broad spectrum of channels that cover my many different interests, and it includes movies that can be watched ad free as well. You can also use it for music, which I do here and there for its large catalog of concerts. To me it’s the best deal in streaming, it has saved me God-only-knows how many hours in commerical interruptions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This move is interesting to me for a few reasons, the first of which being how I just don’t find Peacock of any interest as far as streaming services are concerned. I just don’t like the platform, I don’t like the content, there are far too many commercials, and it’s really never felt like a good value proposition. The sports rights they do hold are too fragmented, if you’re an NFL or MLB fan, you only get one game a week. It made sense for Peacock to be sold off to a larger streaming brand that could get those sporting events in front of their larger subscriber base and extract value out of them to encourage subscriber retention, as I think what it has to offer is better at that than it is to drive new subscriptions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To give you an idea of how much I dislike Peacock, when it was announced they had secured the rights to the MLB Wild Card round games, I decided I would simply not watch them. Later reports would clarify that the games will be simulcast on NBC and NBC Sports Network, allowing people the chance to watch them without necessitating a Peacock subscription, but to feel that strongly about a streaming service to abstain from an entire round of the postseason of your favorite sport is telling. Subscription fatigue is real, and Peacock is the low man on the totem pole for a reason. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Now sure, it\u2019s not completely without its value. If you didn’t have cable and couldn’t pick up the networks with an antenna where you are, Peacock was a great way to watch the Super Bowl and the Olympics this past winter. But those are one and done scenarios, people were not as likely to carry Peacock year-round like they were the other apps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another reason this sparked my interest is it exhibits the continuing pattern of streaming consolidation. We have a major deal tied up in the courts in Paramount Skydance’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, which cleared the DOJ in May and the European Commission last week, only to be hit with a suit from twelve state attorneys general and a temporary restraining order that has pushed the outside closing date as far as June 2027. Mergers and acquisitions are in the air. Could this move by YouTube signal the potential future outright acquisition of NBC\/Peacock?<\/p>\n\n\n\n People state the concern is antitrust laws, if they had any intention of enforcing the antitrust laws, Google would already be ten different companies right now. They may be willing to see if they can add an over-the-air TV network and a significant streaming catalog of classic television and live sports rights. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Another interesting caveat is that YouTube Premium subscribers’ main benefit is not having to sit through commercials, but the addition of the Peacock Premium content is said to be its ads-included tier. So if you’d like to watch The Office or the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air woke remake (God help you) early next year on your YouTube Premium account, you’re going to have to sit through ads. (Live sports include ads regardless of plan, but everyone already knows and accepts this as the reality we have always lived with.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Google is currently facing a lawsuit<\/a>, filed July 14th in the Northern District of California, that asserts its claim that YouTube Premium is ad-free is a falsehood, as video creators often include their own paid promotional spots within the videos. There is a genuine bit of irony that they have added literal ad-supported content in the midst of this lawsuit, which shows they probably view it as more of a speeding ticket than a serious infraction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A concern will be, does this increase the cost of a YouTube Premium subscription? YouTube says the standard Premium price won’t move when Peacock arrives. The upside is significant though, having access to live MLB, NFL, NBA, Premier League, Big Ten and Notre Dame football games is a massive coup for YouTube’s paid service, and may signal they are willing to expand the scope of what the service actually is. Google has the money and means to take it as far as their heart desires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The best thing about this change for sports leagues is it gets their product in front of more Millennial and Gen Z viewers, as their business models currently stand, their revenues would go off a cliff without Baby Boomers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This moves us a step closer to the old-school network model, which in a world of increasing frustration<\/a> over fragmented sports rights, could actually be a good thing. It’s become such a populist issue that Trump’s FCC has made inroads about it.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n Let Peacock be an industry lesson. The subcription model only works when people are actually willing to pay. <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"