FuboTV

Paramount Global is using its latest Fubo TV negotiation to offer an untenable deal to affiliates and reset the entire retransmission consent landscape. The FCC’s response should be obvious: Make everyone play by the same rules.

Sinclair Broadcast Group CEO Chris Ripley said he expects the company’s CBS affiliates to be back on FuboTV in the next couple of months and said broadcasters want to take control of future negotiations with virtual multichannel video programming distributors.

The blackout of CBS affiliates on FuboTV reflects the increasing tension between broadcast networks and their affiliates as TV pivots to streaming. “Having worked around public and private TV broadcasters these last few years, we think dynamics between national networks and station operators are increasingly strained,” Wells Fargo media analyst Steven Cahall said.

Sinclair Broadcast Group’s struggling Bally Sports Networks got a boost with a carriage deal with FuboTV. Sports oriented streaming TV service FuboTV will carry the 19 Bally Sports regional sports networks, giving fans without a traditional cable subscription another way to access those networks and watch their local teams’ games.

FuboTV is now the only virtual pay TV service besides DirecTV Stream to carry Ion, Ion Mystery, Ion Plus, Bounce, Grit, Newsy and Court TV.

FuboTV Inc. shares rallied in the extended session Monday after the streaming TV platform hiked its sales forecast for the third quarter, said it was dropping its sports-betting businesses and reaffirmed its outlook of positive cash flow four years from now. FuboTV shares surged as much as 12% after hours, and were last up around 8% in the extended session, following a 6.3% climb to finish the regular trading day at $4.05 a share.

FuboTV said that it saw ad spending on its streaming platform grow rapidly since it started using Unified ID 2.0 to make transactions on The Trade Desk’s platform. FuboTV became the first Unified ID 2.0 connected TV partner in February.

FuboTV is upping its sports betting game, adding on Thursday SportsGrid — an OTT platform dedicated to content related to sports wagering. SportsGrid offers detailed statistics across the major U.S. sports leagues like the NFL, NBA, MLB and more — including betting options for tennis and golf sporting events. Its analytics platform considers factors like daily odds, lineups and injury reports.

Univision has come to terms with virtual MVPD provider FuboTV on a broadcast retransmission deal, ending an impasse that threatened to black out channels including the flagship Univision, UniMas, Galavision and TUDN.

FuboTV is integrating its sports betting service into the virtual MVPD’s live TV streaming platform, with free-to-play games and FuboTV Sportsbook for real money wagers going live this weekend for select users. The new free-to-play games are called “pick’ems” and show up ahead of select Sunday games.

FuboTV is ditching its lowest-cost plan and migrating any current subscribers to its Pro plan, which costs around $5 more per month, effective May 1. The move to shift legacy customers comes after FuboTV previously stopped offering its Fubo Starter plan, with a price of about $65 per month, to new customers. Existing Fubo Starter plan customers (and those on earlier promotional bundles, including the Family, Entertainment and Starter Promo bundles) will be migrated to the $70 per month Fubo Pro plan starting with their next billing cycle after May 1.

FuboTV named veteran distribution executive Henry Ahn as chief business officer, a new position, effective next month. Previously president of content distribution and partnerships for Univision Communications, Ahn will oversee fuboTV’s content strategy, licensing and business development. He will report to CEO David Gandler.

FuboTV expects to surpass $1 billion in revenue this year. As the company pursues that goal, it wouldn’t hurt to grow its share of the advertising market. As it stands, advertising only accounted for $73.7 million of fuboTV’s $638 million total revenue in 2021. Indeed, subscription revenue will still account for the bulk of the company’s 2022 revenue — particularly if new price increase tests work out. But fuboTV now sounds like it’s beginning to put a more concerted effort behind growing its advertising business, which will help push the total past $1 billion.

FuboTV starts at $64.99 a month, but if you want to sign up, you will need to buy a three-month prepaid package totaling $194.96. It’s unclear if the quarterly offering will be permanent. Plus, as of Sunday morning, the quarterly plans were not available on FuboTV’s site on all platforms.

FuboTV has fully integrated with Dentsu International’s M1 people-based identity and data platform to better target the live sports viewers on its live streaming TV platform. The companies said that advertisers can now use M1’s connected individual, device and panel data across fuboTV’s connected TV inventory that includes 50,000 live sports events per year along with more than 100 sports, news and entertainment channels.

FuboTV said its Fubo Gaming unit got approval to offer online sports wagering in Iowa. Fubo Gaming plans to launch its Fubo Sportsbook in the fourth quarter. The company has already gotten approvals to operate a betting service in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Indiana and New Jersey.

Streaming pay TV provider FuboTV reported second-quarter results far better than Wall Street analysts expected, showing a gain of 91,000 subscribers compared with the year-ago quarter. Total revenue nearly tripled to a record $130.9 million and adjusted losses of 38 cents a share came in more than a dime lower than forecasts. Advertising revenue jumped 281% to $16.5 million.

One month after the 2021 Major League Baseball regular season threw out its first pitch, virtual multichannel video programming distributors YouTube TV, Hulu Plus Live TV and Fubo TV are still without Sinclair Broadcast Group’s regional sports networks, now rebranded as Bally Sports Networks. Pricing appears to be the reason for the decision to do without the channels, and apparently there has been little movement on either side regarding negotiations.

Perhaps the most polarizing OTT company on Wall Street, FuboTV, reported a 98% jump in fourth quarter revenue, passing the six-figure mark for the first time in a quarter to reach $105.1 million. The virtual pay TV operator added 92,800 customers during the final three months of 2020, reaching 547,880 paid subscribers, up 73% year over year.

Comcast on Friday reported that it owns a 9.3% stake worth more than $300 million in FuboTV, which operates a sports-focused virtual MVPD and is getting into the sports betting business. AMC Networks, reported earlier this week that it no longer owned any FuboTV shares.

The open-source identify framework, led by The Trade Desk, aims to maintain targeted advertising on the open internet as third-party cookies go away.

FuboTV shares are riding high again after the emerging company announced it is acquiring sports betting startup Vigtory and will use it to launch a full-fledged sportsbook later this year. Terms were not disclosed for the deal, which is expected to close in the first quarter. It positions Fubo, which was founded in 2015 as an internet-delivered pay-TV operator akin to YouTube TV, as more of a hybrid company.