While Fubo has sued the so-called Spulu, with its CEO calling the sports streaming joint venture “borderline racketeering,” Dennis Mathew, chief executive for New York-based cable operator Altice USA, seems interested in distributing the bundle.
“We’ve got to wait and see where the dust settles,” Mathew said Monday at a Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference. “I know things are still forming, but we want our linear customers to have access to these types of solutions.” (You can access a replay of the event here.)
“And so how do we do that in a way that’s a win for the customer, a win for the programmers and a win for us?“ Mathew added. “I don’t think we’re there yet. Those conversations are not happening at the right level. And so those are some of the conversations we’re pushing to have in the near term.”
In early February, Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery announced a plan to bundle their linear sports channels in a virtual MVPD-like product, with analysts predicting a price point of around $50 a month.
Altice USA has saw its rate of video cord-cutting accelerate to nearly 11% in 2023. It ended the year with just 2.172 million remaining pay TV customers. So Mathew is open to trying new things.
Also read: For U.S. Pay TV, 2023 Was a Transformational Year (Chart of the Day)
Speaking at the Morgan Stanley event, Mathew said Altice USA would move to expand its Android TV-based Optimum Stream product to its rural Suddenlink-spawned markets.
The Optimum Stream device not only supports Altice USA’s pay TV app, which is also playable on iOS and Android, but also popular OTT apps including Netflix and Disney Plus.
It’s “pivotal to make it available to all of our customers,” Mathew said. “We do know that video is the No. 1 product consumed on broadband ... We need to have the right solutions to make sure they can consume any way they want.”
The Altice USA CEO also addressed last week’s Bloomberg report suggesting Charter Communications might buy his company.
“I don’t speculate on what other companies may or may not be doing,” Mathew said. “My No. 1 focus is to drive maximum positive impact for our teammates, our customers and communities we serve and our shareholders by accelerating this transformation.”
