Fubo TV said it hasn’t seen any “negative implications” for its business since losing the signals of CBS affiliates earlier this month.
On the company’s fourth quarter earnings call with analysts, FuboTV CEO David Gandler explained that it made a deal to carry CBS with its parent company Paramount Global.
CBS affiliate deal didn’t accept the terms and CBS replaced the local signals with a national feed.
“”I’m not sure that tactic worked in their favor,” Gandler said. “There’s been some noise about it, but we feel relatively strong about our position to be able to negotiate better rates [with programmers] going forward.”
Gandler said it would be great to have local programming on Fubo. “I think the good news is this local news is now readily available on a number of FAST platforms. And so I think that customers that are looking to get that content are probably able to find it very quickly elsewhere and so we have not seen much of an impact there,” he said.
FuboTV also didn’t renew its programming deal with AMC Networks at the end of the year.
Fubo executives said they felt that with programmers putting their content on numerous platforms, including free ad supported streaming channels, they are finding that their programming expenses are trending down rather than continuing to rise.
“I think the problem is that everyone is looking to double dip and we've demonstrated that we're happy to pay a premium to bring in content that we feel is valuable to the bundle such as the regional sports networks,” Gandler said
Fubo CFO John Janedis noted that over the last 12 months “the majority of [programming deals] did see rollbacks related to pricing.”
An analyst asked how the Fubo would be affected by the financial troubles at the Bally regional sports networks. Diamond Sports Group, which runs the RSNs, missed an interest payment and could wind up in bankruptcy.
Fubo CFO John Janedis said “we do expect the games to air, and I would also add that the term of the deal is very short term.”
An analyst asked how Fubo’s position as a sports focused vMVPD would be affected by YouTube TV getting the National Football League’s Sunday Ticket package of our-of market games.
Gandler said that the market for the regional sports networks was “significantly larger” than the market for Sunday Ticket.
He said about 25 to 35 million sports fans care about their local teams and are still in the cable ecosystem. That compares to only about 2 million customers who sign up for Sunday Ticket.
“I think that we’ve taken the proper direction to super-serve sports fans,” Gandler said. “We never actually had the Sunday Ticket, so we don’t see that to be an impact.”
He added that YouTube TV wouldn’t be the exclusive seller of Sunday Ticket. Google’s deal with the NFL will enable YouTube to sell Sunday Ticket a la carte.
“Basically, you don’t actually need a YouTube TV subscription to get it if you want it,” Gandler said. “So our customers would have access to that, if they so intended.” ■
