The Dan Rayburn Podcast

This week, we highlight all the sports news from Peacock, Pac-12, ESPN, Optus Sport, Amazon, IMG, and NASCAR, detailing viewership stats and new licensing deals. We also cover the recent layoffs at Disney, the BBC's low latency live streaming trial, and the current ad loads of Max, Prime Video and Peacock. Finally, we cover some vendor news, including Wowza's acquisition of AI tech company AVA Intellect, and discuss some ...

This week, we cover a lot of news, stats and numbers across WBD, Disney, Netflix, YouTube, MGM, Amazon, F1, DAZN, NFL, Verizon, Starz, Roku, TikTok, Apple TV, Premier League, JioHotstar, Paramount and other sports and OTT services. We also discuss the changes taking place at Qwilt, including the appointment of a new CEO, the assets of Phenix Real Time Solutions being put up for auction, and Bending Spoons' plans for Brightcove...

This week, we cover the news from the Upfronts, with Netflix and Amazon announcing updated ad-tier user numbers, YouTube disclosing ad conversions on Shorts, and some of the new ad formats coming to OTT platforms. We also detail the upcoming DTC offerings from ESPN and FOX, as well as YouTube's plans to stream an exclusive NFL game for free in September. Finally, we highlight Charter's announcement of its plans to acquire...

This week, we highlight the key Q1 earnings numbers from Disney, WBD, Paramount, AMC Networks, Altice, EchoStar, Vimeo, Kaltura, Akamai, Fastly and Cloudflare. We detail the numbers tied to DTC subscribers additions/losses, profitability, bundling, capex and content spend, and the impact of earnings on stock prices. We also break out the 1.73M cord cutters across pay TV providers and vMVPDs, along with sports news from MLB, NFL, ML...

This week, we detail Roku's revenue growth of 16% YoY, with the number of streaming hours growing by 5.1B hours YoY. We also highlight Roku's announcement that more than a third of streaming households in the U.S. streamed monthly from its content row in Q1, with a total of more than 125 million people every day. We detail Fubo's earnings, with North America subscribers declining 2.7% YoY to 1.47M and a net profit fo...

This week, we detail Comcast's Q1 earnings, including Peacock's sub gains, thanks to the Charter bundle, with revenue up 16%, on an EBITDA loss of $215M, down from $639M YoY. We also cover all the pay TV losses from Comcast, Verizon, and Charter in the quarter, as well as Comcast's worst broadband losses ever in a quarter. We highlight MSG Networks deal with its lender JPMorgan that allows the RSN to avoid bankruptcy...

This week, we detail Netflix's Q1 earnings, including its free cash flow, content spending, and 2025 guidance forecast of $43.5-$44.5 billion. We highlight all of Netflix's comments around its ad tech platform, Netflix Ads Suite (NAS), and why Netflix says owning the tech stack is foundational to its long-term ads strategy. We also mention Netflix's comments about video podcasts and why it doesn't see YouTube as...

For this special podcast, Mark Donnigan and I recap key takeaways from the 2025 NAB Show in Las Vegas, discussing what we heard on the show floor and in sessions. We detail the NAB’s attendance numbers and the impact I saw on the number of attendees due to the uncertainty in the financial market. We also highlight the many different metrics that exhibitors, sponsors and attendees use to determine the success of shows. We discuss wh...

This week, we highlight DIRECTV's expanding RSN bundling options, which cover 18 MLB, 16 NBA, and 10 NHL franchises and the addition of Max Basic with Ads to its MyEntertainment Genre Pack. We also highlight the MLB TV streaming outage on opening day, JioHotstar's announcement that JioHotstar now has over 100 million subscribers, and Netflix's news that it is now streaming HDR10+ content for AV1-enabled devices. Fina...

This week, we discuss JioHotstar's live stream of the ICC Champions Trophy Final, with a reported 60 million concurrent streams and why the industry needs to stop putting so much clout on concurrent or AMA numbers without any other details on the quality of the stream. We also detail the F1 TV Premium tier, offering 4K video and multiview functionality for an additional $6 monthly, and Comcast's deal with the Internationa...

This week, we talk about the problems with Hulu's Oscars live stream and why streaming cannot take the place of broadcast distribution in terms of scalability and dependability. We also point out the likelihood of MSG Networks and/or its affiliates declaring bankruptcy and the potential consequences for their streaming business. We discuss the announcement that all Elite Wrestling PPV events will soon be available on Prime Vid...

This week, we discuss the Q4 earnings numbers tied to subscribers and profitability from Fubo, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount, and EchoStar. We also highlight the latest sports news from Disney, DAZN, LALIGA, Fox, LFP, and Sky. We detail the new $35 entertainment package from DIRECTV, which includes 43 linear channels and Disney+, Hulu+ and Max streaming services. Finally, we cover the news that Amazon will launch a live, linear...

This week, we discuss all the latest sports news, including ESPN and MLB ending their contract early, the excellent looking live stream of the NASCAR Daytona 500 on Max and SURJ's investment in DAZN, rumored to be $1 billion. We also highlight the news that DIRECTV's MySports package will include 140 NBC affiliates, Prime Video offering Ligue 1 matches via PPV, reports that ESPN has walked away from F1 negotiations, and B...

This week, we review FOX and Tubi's Super Bowl stream, detailing the video quality, latency, playback, viewership numbers and overall event success. We also detail Q4 and full-year earnings from Roku, AMC Networks, Altice, Fastly and Harmonic, which saw mixed results. We highlight the launch of JioHotstar, which resulted in the merger between Hotstar and JioCinema, subscriber numbers from Philo, the Apple TV app launching on A...

This week, we detail the launch of competing $70 sports streaming packages from Comcast’s Xfinity and DirecTV and FOX's plans to launch a DTC streaming service. We also cover the latest earnings from Comcast, Disney and Alphabet, with Disney+ losing 700,000 subscribers, Peacock's DTC business losing $436M, and YouTube seeing advertising revenue of $10.4 billion, with growth driven by the 2024 U.S. election. We also discus...

This week, we discuss all the latest NFL streaming news, including Amazon's exclusive NFL Wild Card playoff game, which reached an all-time high of 24.6M viewers, details from FOX on their 1080p upscaled 4k HDR stream and their plans to make the stream available on Tubi. We also detail the network shutdown of Limelight Networks as part of Edgio's bankruptcy, what it means for the CDN industry, and the thousands of employe...

This week, I discuss the Disney and Fubo deal, what it means for subscribers and the impact of Venu Sports no longer launching in the market. I detail the deal terms and what's being misreported, separating facts from guesses. I also discuss viewership numbers from Netflix's debut of WWE’s Monday Night Raw, final global viewership numbers for Netflix's NFL games on Christmas and complete NFL season viewership data on...

For this special podcast episode, we review Netflix's streaming of the NFL games on Christmas, detailing some tech details related to the stream quality, latency, player functionality, reported user feedback, and viewership statistics for the U.S. market. We compare the 27 million peak viewers in the U.S. stat to previous NFL games across broadcast, Prime Video and Peacock and why viewership was down compared to broadcast. We ...

This week, we detail the news of more layoffs by streaming vendors and what it means for the industry going into the new year as everyone looks to be more operationally efficient in their spending. We also cover the latest price increase by YouTube TV, pushing the service to $82.99 a month, FIFA's broadcast deal with DAZN, and Amazon's latest TNF viewership numbers of 18.48 million viewers, making it the most-watched TNF ...