Comcast and Paramount’s streaming service SkyShowtime launches in the Nordics this month

Comcast’s Sky and Paramount announced the official launch date for SkyShowtime, a new European streaming service. It will initially launch in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden on September 20, 2022. The content lineup for the service includes a combination of titles from Paramount+, Showtime, and Peacock, giving subscribers over 10,000 hours of content all on one platform.

At launch, the SkyShowtime app will be available in the Nordics via Android devices, iOS devices, tvOS, and the SkyShowtime website. The monthly subscription price for each country varies. SkyShowtime will be DKK 69 in Denmark, €6,99 in Finland, NOK 79 in Norway, and SEK 79 in Sweden.

The streaming service is replacing Paramount+, which rolled out in the Nordics just this past year in March 2021. Paramount+ subscribers in the Nordics will move over to SkyShowtime once it launches.

SkyShowtime will expand to the Netherlands later this year. In 2023, the service will become available in 17 more countries, including Albania, Andorra, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain. In total, SkyShowtime will be available to subscribers in 22 territories by next year.

The streaming service will not only feature popular TV series, films, and local original programming, but it will also offer exclusive premieres of first-run theatrical films from Paramount Pictures and Universal Pictures. Content will be available in 18 different languages.

Comcast’s Sky and Paramount are looking to grow their subscriber bases in any way they can, and this new launch is an attempt to reach more customers. According to Sky, the 20+ European markets comprise 90 million homes.

The joint streaming venture between Comcast and Paramount Global (formerly Viacom CBS) was previously announced in August 2021. SkyShowtime finally received full regulatory approval in Europe in February 2022.

Comcast and Paramount’s streaming service SkyShowtime launches in the Nordics this month by Lauren Forristal originally published on TechCrunch

Comcast launches SportsTech startup accelerator with NASCAR and others

Comcast NBCUniversal believes its can access startup innovation while supporting future Olympic gold-medalists.

The American mass media company launched its new SportsTech accelerator today, based in part, on that impetus.

TechCrunch attended a briefing with Comcast execs at 30 Rock NYC to learn more about the initiative.

The SportsTech accelerator is a partnership across Comcast NBCUniversal’s sports media brands: NBC Sports, Sky Sports and the Golf Channel.

The program brings in industry partners NASCAR, U.S. Ski & Snowboard and USA Swimming — all of whose sports broadcast on Comcast NBC channels.

Starting today, pre-Series A sports technology startups can apply to become part of a 10-company cohort.

Accepted ventures will gain $50,000 in equity-based funding and enter SportsTech’s three-month accelerator boot camp — with sports industry support and mentorship — to kick off at Comcast’s Atlanta offices August 2020.

Boomtown Accelerators will join Comcast in managing the SportsTech program, with both sharing a minimum of 6% equity in selected startups.

Industry partners, such as NASCAR and U.S. Ski & Snowboard, will play an advisory role in startup selection, but won’t add capital.

An overarching objective for SportsTech emerged during conversations with execs and Jenna Kurath, Comcast’s VP for Startup Partner Development, who will run the new accelerator.

Comcast and partners aim to access innovation that could advance the business and competitive aspects of each organization.

From McDonald’s McD Tech Labs to Mastercard’s Start Path, corporate incubators and accelerators have become common in large cap America, where companies look to tap startup ingenuity and deal-flow to adapt and hedge disruption.

Toward its own goals, SportsTech has designated several preferred startup categories. They include Business of Sports, Team and Coach Success and Athlete and Player Performance.

SportsTech partners, such as NASCAR, hope to access innovation to drive greater audience engagement. The motorsport series (and its advertising-base) has become more device-distributed, and NASCAR streams more race-day data live, from the pits to the driver’s seat.

“The focus has grown into what are we going to do to introduce more technology in the competition side of the sport…the fan experience side and how we operate as a business,” said NASCAR Chief Innovation Officer Craig Neeb.

“We’re confident we’re going to get access to some incredibly strong and innovative companies,” he said of NASCAR’s SportsTech participation.

U.S. Ski & Snowboard — the nonprofit that manages America’s snowsport competition teams  — has an eye on performance and medical tech for its athletes.

“Wearable technology [to measure performance]…is an area of interest…and things like computer vision and artificial intelligence for us to better understand technical elements, are quite interesting,” said Troy Taylor, U.S. Ski & Snowboard’s Director of High Performance.

US Ski Team

Credit: U.S. Ski & Snowboard

Some of that technology could boost prospects of U.S. athletes, such as alpine skiers Tommy Ford and Mikaela Shiffrin, at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

In a $7.75 billion deal inked in 2014, Comcast NBCUniversal purchased the U.S. broadcast rights for Olympic competition —  summer and winter —  through 2032.

“We asked ourselves, ‘could we do more?’ The notion of an innovation engine that runs before, during and after the Olympics. Could that give our Team USA a competitive edge in their pursuit for gold?,” said Jenna Kurath.

The answer came up in the affirmative and led to the formation of Comcast’s SportsTech accelerator.

Beyond supporting Olympic achievement, there is a strategic business motivation for Comcast and its new organization.

“The early insights we gain from these companies could lead to other commercial relationships, whether that’s licensing or even acquisition,” Will McIntosh, EVP for NBC Sports Digital and Consumer Business, told TechCrunch.

SportsTech is Comcast’s third accelerator, and the organization has a VC fund, San Francisco-based Comcast Ventures — which has invested in the likes of Lyft, Vimeo and Slack and racked up 67 exits, per Crunchbase data.

After completing the SportsTech accelerator, cohort startups could receive series-level investment or purchase offers from Comcast, its venture arm or industry partners, such as NASCAR.

“Our natural discipline right now is…to have early deliverables. But overtime, with our existing partners, we’ll have conversations about who else could be a logical value-add to bring into this ecosystem,” said Bill Connors, Comcast Central Division President.

Amazon Product Managers Look For Another Way To Score

Will soccer be the ticket to getting Amazon access to Europe?
Will soccer be the ticket to getting Amazon access to Europe?
Image Credit: Nathan Rupert

The Amazon product managers have a real problem on their hands. They are in charge of one of the more popular brands in the world and the creation of their Amazon Prime service has only made the company even more popular. However, as we are all aware of, what you did for me yesterday is nice, but what I’m really interested in is what you will be doing for me tomorrow. The Amazon product managers are under a lot of pressure to continue to update their product development definition and keep growing the brand. One part of the world where Amazon would like to become bigger is Britain. What the product managers need is a way to hook more customers.

Say Hello To Soccer

In the U.S. if you wanted to get more people to use your service, then you could strike a deal with the NFL to be permitted to broadcast football games. It turns out that in Britain the same rules apply. What the Amazon product managers have gone and done is to buy the rights to broadcast a collection of soccer games from none other than the most popular sports league in the world: the English Premier League. Now that’s something to add to your product manager resume. Before everyone with an Amazon Prime membership starts to get too excited, you need to understand that there are some limitations to what has been agreed to. The broadcasting rights will be limited to only Britain. Amazon Prime members will be able to see a selection of 20 games per season.

What is important here is that this agreement represents a big boost to Amazon’s brand new effort to provide access to live sporting events. So what’s going on here? Amazon has been very successful in entering a number of other businesses including groceries and healthcare. If they can leverage this soccer contract they may be able to start to reduce the power that traditional broadcasters hold based on their domination of sports broadcasting. There are limits to Amazon is going to be able to provide in their sports package. There will not be any of the Premier League’s marquee offerings. It will also only include two rounds of play during the season. One of the matches that will be covered will be in the middle of the week. The next will be on the December 26 Boxing Day holiday. What works in Amazon’s favor is that the Premier League is the only major league in Europe who schedules games to be played on that day.

This is not going to be Amazon’s first entry into the sports broadcasting arena. In the past, Amazon has experimented with the broadcasting of major sports leagues. Previously Amazon broadcasted 10 NFL games on Thursday night. These are the NFL’s least popular games. In order to obtain the rights to broadcast these games, Amazon paid the NFL US$50 million. The broadcasting was so well received that the Amazon product managers went ahead and renewed their contract with the NFL for the next two years. Amazon’s agreement with the Premier League covers 3 seasons. The plan is for Amazon to stream the games onto it’s Prime Video network. The cost of the Amazon Prime service is $106 per year.

How Will This Help Amazon?

So why didn’t the Amazon product managers get all of the Premier League games? It turns out that the most popular soccer games that are contained in the biggest packages of match days which were snapped up by the British TV broadcasters Sky and BT Group. Sky has been broadcasting Premier League games since Sky was founded back in 1992. They purchased the rights to 128 games in a single season for 1.2B pounds per year. Starting to do business with Amazon may cause some problems for the Premier League in the future. The deal that they have struck with Amazon represents a turning point for them. It also represents a possible problem with saturating the market.

In a season of soccer, there are 380 games in total that are played. Sky and BT together will be broadcasting 180 of these games. The Premier League still wants people to show up and view their games at the stadium. In order to ensure that this happens, the U.K. still insists that games that start at 3pm on a Saturday are blacked out from being broadcasted. The cost of bidding on the rights of broadcasting soccer games has been increasing at a rapid rate over the past two decades. This has resulted in a number of questions about just exactly how high the prices could go. The first deal for broadcasting soccer matches from 1992 to 1997 was worth 191M pounds. The current three year rights deal came in at 5.1B pounds.

One of the big issues that the Amazon product managers are going to be facing as they move forward will be the cost to carry soccer matches on the U.K. prime channel. The good news for the Amazon product managers is that it is starting to look like the price to carry live soccer matches in Britain may have peaked. Note this this may only be limited to the domestic rights for the games – international rights could be a whole other story. The last time that the rights to broadcast the next season of soccer in Britain went on the market, the bids that came in did not exceed the 5B pound mark. In fact, two of the packages that were being offered ended up going unsold. This what what provided a window of opportunity for the Amazon product managers. They swooped in and purchased one of the unsold packages in order to start their broadcasting of Premier League soccer.

What All Of This Means For You

Everyone knows who Amazon is – they are that big online company that sells books, right? Well, the product managers at Amazon are, of course, under a great deal of pressure to continue to find ways to keep the company growing. In order to make this happen in the past they have expanded into new markets such as groceries and healthcare. Now they are looking at their product manager job description and they are ready to try something different: streaming live sporting events. In Europe.

The Amazon product managers have purchased the rights to stream 20 games that will be played by the English Premier League to Amazon Prime customers who live in Britain. This move represents an attempt by Amazon to go up against the broadcasters who have a hold based on their domination of sports broadcasting. There will be limits on which games Amazon can broadcast and when they will be played. Amazon already has some experience in the world of live sports broadcasting. They have an ongoing deal with the NFL to broadcast some U.S. games. Now that they are starting to broadcast soccer games in Britain this means that Amazon is going to be competing with British TV broadcasters Sky and BT Group. There are a lot of soccer games played each season. Some games cannot be broadcasted because the league still wants people to come to the stadiums and watch the games live. The cost of purchasing broadcasting rights has been increasing over time. Amazon was able to get started by purchasing a package of games that nobody else had wanted.

Amazon is making a bold move in starting to offer streaming of Premier League soccer matches in Britain. Considering how much the British love soccer, this may be a very wise move. Since the only way to view the matches is to be an Amazon Prime member, offering the soccer matches could help Amazon to boost Prime membership in the U.K. Only time will tell if soccer could be the key to Amazon product managers success in Britain.

– Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Product Management Skills™

Question For You: Next season do you think that the Amazon product managers should try to get more soccer games to broadcast?

Click here to get automatic updates when
The Accidental Product Manager Blog is updated.

P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental Product Manager Newsletter are now available. It’s your product – it’s your career. Subscribe now: Click Here!

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

When you travel and you need transportation at the other end of your trip, what do you do? If you are like most of us, when you are buying your airplane ticket and making your hotel reservation you go ahead and call up an established rental car company and make a reservation. When you fly into the airport, you take the car rental bus to the car rental lot, pick up your car and you drive away. That’s all fine, but that is so old school. It turns our that there is a new way to get around and it’s changing the rental car product development definition and causing headaches for established rental car company product managers.

The post Amazon Product Managers Look For Another Way To Score appeared first on The Accidental Product Manager.

Netflix rival Iflix offloads its Africa business to focus on Asia

Iflix, the emerging market Netflix competitor that’s backed by Sky, is leaving Africa to double down on its business in Asia.

The Malaysia-based company announced today it has sold the remaining shares in its Africa business — Kwesé Iflix — to Econet Group, the telecom firm that is already an investor in the business. The deal size is not disclosed. Kwesé Iflix covers the Iflix service in eight countries — Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe — with plans to expand to four more soon.

The completion of the deal means that Iflix’s total market coverage is trimmed to 23 countries, including India, markets in Southeast Asia, the Middle East and more.

“It has been an incredible journey and learning experience, launching our service in Africa. The acquisition by the Econet Group, our regional partner and Africa’s leading broadcast network, is a significant milestone for the African business, and further reinforces Iiflix’s commitment to our core markets in Asia, particularly Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines which continue to grow from strength to strength,” Iflix co-founder and CEO Mark Britt said in a statement.

Iflix CEO Mark Britt said the company will double down on Asian markets after exiting its Africa business (Photo by studioEAST/Getty Images)

Iflix has raised nearly $300 million to date from investors that include British broadcaster Sky, U.S. Hearst Communications, broadband and TV provider Liberty Global and Malaysia-based Catcha Group . Its most recent funding round was $133 million in August 2017.

Econet-owned pay TV firm Kwesé bought into the company’s Africa business in February 2018, therein creating the rebranded ‘Kwesé Iflix’ joint venture. Since then, Iflix has divested its stake until finally exiting the business as announced today.

Iflix offers a freemium service with a paid tier that costs around $3 per month. It claims an audience of “millions” of users. Its biggest rival is Netflix, which has begun testing more aggressive pricing in Malaysia — Iflix’s home market — through a mobile-only package that lowers its subscription cost to RM17, or around $4, each month.

Moves like that put Iflix and other regional players such as Hooq — which doesn’t operate in Malaysia — under pressure if Netflix decides to press ahead and expand its cheaper subscription to more markets in Asia.

Both Iflix and HOOQ pivoted to freemium earlier this year, and Iflix, in particular, has doubled down on supply. The Malaysian firm this month initiated a $5 million program to back around 30 independent content makers across Asia as it bids to widen its local programming library to compete with rivals which, in Asia, include traditional TV.