The broadcast talk ahead of the new NFL season is centred on streaming and the potential partnership between FOX, ESPN and Disney has garnered most of the attention.
FOX Ceo Lachlan Murdoch, speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference on Monday, believes the service can reach 5 million subscribers over the first five years.
“Fox has ‘built our plans around’ the 5 million subscriber benchmark, Murdoch said. “Some of the talk around this being in the teens or 20 million subs, we don’t think that’s the case.”
The JV “is a very good business for us” given the tens of millions of “cord-nevers” who want a cheaper way to access sports, the exec said. Those sports subscribers will be “incremental to our base.”
Murdoch said executives have done plenty of homework regarding the venture.
“We have obviously done a lot of work on this. We’ve thought about it extensively.
There has been “a lot of hyperventilation about it,” he continued.
In practice he added it will operate “like a vMVPD” such as YouTube TV or Hulu + Live TV. The JV members and “will get paid per subscriber, just as if we were selling to a vMVPD.”
He did admit streaming has been a minefield and that this will be the company’s sole survivor.
“We’re not going back into the arena. We’re out of the streaming arena, from an entertainment perspective. In the entertainment streaming wars, the arena is like a sea of blood. Everyone’s bled out and we’re happy not to engage in it … we’ve always said we’re distribution agnostic.”
Given past experience of media behemoths like NBC, Paramount, Disney and Warner Bros, this could be the only viable option going forward.
