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🔥 Zuck eyes the future

Plus: BBC's 'Eric Cantona' moment

Author

Oli Thomas
July 23, 2024

Its never great when one of your star attractions goes rogue and causes a load of unwelcome attention. Think Manchester United when Eric Cantona fly-kicked a fan in the face. Or Take That when Robbie Williams ditched them.

The BBC are now right in the thick of it with Strictly Come Dancing, as various celebrities reveal their negative experiences on a near-daily basis. Over 8 million people tuned in each week to watch the last series; few shows bring that size of audience today, especially one thats in its 20th year. And yet right now the show is at risk of being called up before a political committee. The BBC’s star striker is on bail pending appeal.

So what went wrong?

One theory suggests the clamour for fame and social influence has driven this behaviour: the desire to stay in the show - and reap the benefits of more airtime & exposure - is causing machiavellian mayhem behind the scenes.

These are highly trained dancers, skilled in their art, at (one would think) the peak of their careers, and yet the money is not in the performance but in the fame.

And here’s the point: this is where we are in the wider media industry today - there is less and less money in the content (performance) itself - the majority of growth will come from advertising.

The challenges around getting people to pay for content are clear - over supply of free content, subscription fatigue, and the fragmentation of short-form.

This is why every major video streamer has embraced advertising in recent years.

The value has always been in the audience - but increasingly it will be less about getting them to pay you, and more about getting someone else to pay you to reach them.

It sounds basic, but its going to lead to the emergence of a whole load of new business models.

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PwC’ latest forecast on the Media industry

“It’s increasingly challenging to drive revenue growth by selling E&M products directly to users” according to the latest Global Entertainment & Media Outlook released by PwC. Instead:

“the real growth story, the biggest opportunity, lies in what companies are willing to pay to reach consumers, whether they are on phones, playing games, on the road, or on e-commerce sites”

Cutting through the noise and finding consumers is getting tougher. And so the value of being able “to reach consumers” is increasing - with advertising forecast to drive more than half of all growth for the sector out to 2028.

What this means is existing media companies need to think about (a) how they continue to drive loyal and relevant audiences, and (b) how they can monetise these audiences through new business models (that aren’t as dependent on subscriptions and transactions).

Read more here

Zuck eyes the future

Meta is in talks to take a $5Bn stake in Ray Ban owner, EssilorLuxottica pointing to a bullish outlook on the future of smart glasses following Meta's partnership with Ray Ban.

The current smart glasses were slow to take-off, but Ray Ban recently had to increase production due to the demand, and analysts are positive on the outlook: “"We believe Meta's Ray-Ban Smart Glasses may only be a generation or two away from finding product market fit” said Bernstein recently.

Current glasses allow you to: take photos, listen to music, make calls, and live-stream to Instagram and Facebook.

Future glasses will allow you to do a whole lot more with greater integration of AI and Metaverse capabilities.

Source: Meta

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Best of the Rest

GAMING: Manchester City have launched a new gaming experience in Fortnite, their first foray onto the platform. With “many budding fans entering football fandom via exposure through video games”, these partnerships are becoming increasingly popular.

STREAMING:AMC have done a deal with Netflix to put more programming on the platform in the hope it will drive audiences to

STREAMING: Amazon acquired UK Production company Bray Film Studios, its first UK studio acquisition and site for filming of its Lord of the Rings series.

STREAMING: Latest Netflix results showed 278M subs globally, up 8M but increasing at a slower rate than in the last two quarters.

Investors look to live entertainment

Private Equity has been lapping up music rights in recent years, and now it looks like it’s turning its eye to the live events.

Taylor’s Eras tour has created mass awareness of the value of live music - and recent numbers show live music revenues grew 26% in 2023, accounting for half of the music market.

Bloomberg analysts have now suggested that live music is the hottest place right now for Private Equity money, with live entertainment more broadly hitting record numbers and now fully recovered from the pandemic hit.

Read more here

Pick of the posts

Retailers are switching on to the massive opportunities from Retail Media - a catch-all term for how retailers can use their real estate (digital billboards), online platforms, and vast amounts of customer data, to drive a significant and high margin revenue stream.