Legacy media has long suffered from the innovator’s dilemma, with most players allergic to risk. Fox buying Roku is a bold move. Fox has repeatedly talked about using its financial strength to make acquisitions and was routinely criticized for being underlevered, but Roku is a far larger acquisition than any Fox investor expected. We have…
Roku’s tvOS has become the “gatekeeper to streaming,” so why hasn’t anyone bought it? We’ve predicted multiple times that it would be acquired, and we have been wrong. Could this time be different? At ~$25-30 billion, with a coveted logged-in user graph and the CTV ad wars heating up, Roku could reinvent an acquirer’s story…
Loading the Elevenlabs Text to Speech AudioNative Player… Watching the NBA Finals this week was a strong reminder of the power of live sports and its importance to the media ecosystem. While final numbers from last night’s Game 4 are not in yet, Game 3 was ABC/ESPN’s most watched NBA Finals Game 3 since 1998…
Could You Buy the Knicks Soon? LightShed’s Brandon Ross Interviewed on the Business Decision Podcast
The New York Knicks are 2 wins away from their first NBA title in 53 years. Naturally, MSGS investors are focused on a windfall of postseason revenue, especially from ticket sales at the Garden. However, work continues behind the scenes on another Dolan spin-off – this time separating the Knicks from the Rangers. This should…
Open the Peacock app on your phone right now. Microdramas licensed from ReelShort sit natively inside the app (“Love Me, Bite Me” with 68 episodes, “Wings of Fire: The Dragon Slayer Is My Ex-Lover,” and more). Vertical NBA clips from last night’s OKC vs. San Antonio playoff game stream without needing to rotate your phone.…
Back in 2019, in a CNBC interview, Spotify Co-Founder Daniel Ek described Spotify’s bold ambition: “It is really about expanding our mission from just being about music to being about all of audio and being the world’s leading audio platform.” Ek expanded on that vision at the 2022 Investor Day, stating Spotify had moved “from…
Amazon and YouTube won Upfront Week. That is the simple version. The longer version involves legacy media spending irrationally on content that does not drive retrans, at least three companies pretending they have Amazon’s full-funnel advertising capabilities without the closed-loop attribution to back it up, why the narrative that sports moving to streaming is anti-consumer…
The US wireless incumbents are nervous, and this week they showed it. AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon announced this morning that they plan to pool spectrum for direct-to-cell service, an agreement in principle with no agreement behind it. The FCC, separately, cleared EchoStar’s spectrum sales to AT&T and SpaceX earlier this week. We read the JV…
The narrative that streaming is making the NFL unaffordable has become a talking point for politicians and regulators. The data tells a completely different story. Yes, NFL games are now spread across more services than ever. But streaming competition has splintered the old cable bundle, giving consumers the ability to pay only for what they…
Cogent is struggling to execute on every part of its business. Without operational improvements that get Cogent back to sustained free cash flow, the equity story increasingly will rely on asset-sales. We are cutting our price target to $12 from $17 and maintaining our Sell rating. Wavelengths, the high-margin growth product that was supposed to…
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