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Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Cord cutting or cord shaving....or just much ado about nothing

For all the talk about "Cord Cutting" and or "Cord Shaving" (where people cut down their cable tv bill to the basics but enhance it with a Netflix subscription or similar) this report clearly shows that its much ado about nothing.

http://www.theconvergence.tv/2013/05/21/pay-tv-industry-sees-first-4-quarter-loss-ever

In the last year pay-tv subscribers dropped less than 80,000 subscribers (heck I've seen more articles about Cord Cutting than that......).

For the year, cable operators were down a whopping 1.56 million subs, BUT telcos gained 1.3 million and satellite picked up 160,000.
In other words, yes some people dropped cable but they moved to U-Verse and Fios.

So in other words with 94m pay tv subscribers in the USA dropping at a rate of 80,000 a year and allowing for no more new people to be born or no more immigration......I'll be the last TimeWarner subscriber in 1,175 years.

We should all be so lucky.


Cheers,
Dean

Thursday, May 2, 2013

Fantasy sports?

You know as a foreigner I find the whole American idea of Fantasy Sports intriguing.

For years I've wondered if the USA was just leading the way and there would be fantasy EPL or fantasy Rugby Union announced next. ...And as close to "fantasy selection process" the Indian IPL cricket tournament is with its annual auction played out by indian billionaires....its still a real event played in real life.

So when the New Jersey governor Chris Christie said a few months ago that he was making a state ruling that NJ Casinos can start taking bets on fantasy sports and if Obama didn't like it he could kiss his ass and take the state to court.....I sat up and took notice.

Whats really interesting is this comment

"Most players spend $467.60 per year playing fantasy sports"

in the article - http://seekingalpha.com/article/1362721-the-only-stock-for-investing-in-daily-fantasy-sports?  about how MGT a listed company have bought out www.FanThrowDown.com for $4m but that The top website in daily fantasy sports, www.FanDuel.com just received $11 million in Series C financing (its Series B was $4 million) led by the investment unit of Comcast.....!!

If fantasy sports participants are betting $450 a year....this means they're gambling more than they are paying to watch the games in the first place....Will there be a "bet by set top box" league on every game on every cable channel?

Better still could there be a "bet on survivor winner" to draw in a bigger more widespread audience?

Any thoughts?



Cheers,
Dean