The debate on the state of the 'streaming nation': inflation is its present and live sport, its possible future

It was born on March 29 and yesterday, April 30, the on-demand information platform CNN+ had already closed in the United States.

She has only had a month to live.

When his parent company WarnerMedia —the same as HBO Max— made its merger with Discovery effective a few weeks ago, he decided to put aside this new project.

"In a market as complex as that of on-demand content, consumers want simplicity and have a comprehensive service that provides a better experience and more value than independent offers," said in a report those responsible for the newborn conglomerate, Warner Bros Discovery.

They thus argued the end of an ambitious launch that had cost hundreds of millions of dollars and that had attracted very few subscribers that month.

The fleeting life of this new American service cannot summarize everything that has happened in the last chapters of the eternal global

war , but it does give a good account of how convulsive and chaotic this industry is under construction.

Also indicative of its unpredictable future is the fact that Netflix has changed its mind so quickly about including advertising on its service.

For years, it has flatly denied this possibility, but a month ago it slightly opened the door and just a few days ago it was left completely open, just after announcing its first loss of subscribers in its history, which has caused its stock market to crash.

The GECA OTT Barometer, which has presented its twelfth wave this Friday, analyzes the tolerance to advertising of platform users in Spain.

55.8% would accept the ads if the quota were reduced.

24.7% would prefer to pay something more and not have them and 19.5% would unsubscribe if they reached HBO Max, Movistar Plus +, Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Filmin or Disney +.

“Free-to-air television in Spain would not be amused if the platforms entered the advertising cake.

Many of the agreements that they now have with them [to broadcast series and movies] are going to be strained”, predicts Enrique García Maroto, director of national consulting for GECA and creator of this study.

According to his analysis, the decrease in the penetration of platforms in Spanish homes is not limited to Netflix alone.

Almost all the others have also regressed in recent months.

"Since Netflix has announced that it has lost subscribers, the term saturation is used a lot, but we forget about other aspects, such as the world economic situation," explains García Maroto earlier this week by phone to this newspaper.

The analyst says that, until now, his quarterly study showed that one of the favorite responses of customers when explaining the reasons why they subscribe to this type of service was that they considered its price to be affordable.

“In this wave, that response registers the second lowest data since 2020 ″, he points out.

It is no longer cheap entertainment for many of them.

"And now,

Almost all platforms, not just Netflix, have lost penetration in Spanish households in recent months, according to GECA.

In the image, 'Loki', Disney + series.

Inflation marks the current trend

As we told you a few days ago, Netflix's slowdown has to do with many more circumstantial factors than structural ones.

And not all point to a saturation of the

industry .

The company has not only left the Russian market after the invasion of Ukraine, it is also facing the weakness of its catalog base in favor of its competitors and a perception, true or false, that its extensive offer lacks quality.

Already in December 2021, the consulting firm Deloitte predicted that throughout this year at least 150 million subscriptions of this type of service would be canceled throughout the planet, although it also announced that the number of new clients was still going to be elder.

But the inflation that has hit a world in permanent crisis in recent months has changed things.

Prices soared in March in the United States, with a year-on-year rise of 8.5%, a figure not seen since 1981, due to the great increase in energy and food prices.

As a consequence, 36% of US citizens are considering canceling some of their pay television subscriptions to contain spending, Sophie Mellor recalled in

in mid-April.

Some of the cast of the Netflix reality show 'Insiders'.Netflix

Spain seems to follow a trend that has also been registered in large economies such as the British.

The Spanish Gross Domestic Product (GDP) barely grew by 0.3% between January and March, according to the National Institute of Statistics (INE), due to inflation that has lowered consumption in general.

One of the first affected by the increase in so many bills has been

services , considered superfluous.

According to the most recent yearbook of the General Society of Authors and Publishers (SGAE), the majority of Spanish households had more than one paid content subscription in 2020.

So many have a choice to unsubscribe.

The large entertainment companies are aware that users who were already planning last year to cut their spending on their digital platforms did so when they were overwhelmed by so much offer, after the end of the confinements forced by the coronavirus and the return to life abroad. From home.

That is why they have decided to design their proposals according to each market.

Peacock (NBC) and Viacom (CBS) are two on-demand services that are part of the wide range of

in North America and Latin America.

For its expansion in a good handful of European countries in 2022, they have decided to launch as a single platform that does not saturate its potential clients so much: SkyShowtime.

Their challenge is to find their own identity with which to attract a specific niche of users, if not all of them are already occupied.

Sport to the rescue

In view of the fate of CNN+, information is not a type of content that attracts new clients to this industry.

Companies, in order not to cling only to series, movies and non-fiction content such as documentaries, are already betting on other entertainment formats typical of free-to-air television.

Netflix has incorporated new reality shows in Spain, such as

and

Amazon Prime Video has opted for talent contests such as

and HBO Max has already announced the premiere of its first

in our country,

.

So far, none of these attempts has proven very effective in attracting more customers.

Amazon Prime Video has already broadcast Premier League matches in the UK. AFP7 via Europa Press (Europa Press)

On the other hand, the broadcast of live sports competitions can be a shock.

Apple TV+ has broadcast Major League Baseball games in the United States.

Your customers have the ability to ask Siri on the fly for stats related to the teams or players playing them.

For now, it does so without increasing the price of your subscription.

And Amazon already entered the UK football market in 2018 by broadcasting 20 Premier League matches.

“If the

platforms take over the rights to sports broadcasts,

yes it can be a revolution of spectators.

63% of the Spanish users that we have surveyed for the last barometer assure that they would be willing to pay for it”, advances García Maroto.

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