(This was originally shared in today’s Monetizing Media newsletter. Sign up here.)
Digestible Media
Film/TV/Video
- NBCUniversal Q1 revenue dropped 7% yoy to $7.7b. (Read more)
- Filmed entertainment down 22.5% to $1.4b. Theme park revenue down 31.9% to $869m.
- Ad revenue was down just 2.2% but Comcast expects a harder hit in ad revenue in Q2.
- TF1 Group, the French TV broadcaster, reported Q1 earnings (Read more)
- IMAX Q1 earnings: just $35m in revenue given cinema closures, that’s -56% yoy. With a $49m net loss, compared to a $8m net profit in Q1 2019. (Read more)
- Amazon signed a contract to stream Thursday night NFL games through 2022 for $65m per year. (Read more)
- AMC Entertainment is delayed Q1 earnings release until June. (Read more)
Publishing
- The Financial Times‘ consulting arm, FT Strategies, is using a grant from Google News Initiative to work with 8 other European publishers on improving their subscription offerings. (Read more)
- Subscription publishers are taking advantage of a weakened ad market to increase paid acquisition. Condé Nast subscriber growth was up 100% yoy in March with 50% of new subs from paid. (Read more)
Interactive Media
SFX
- Bublar Group, a Swedish company whose subsidiaries provide AR & VR solutions to multiple industries, is acquiring the Stockholm-based SFX group Goodbye Kansas for $5.7m in stock. (Read more)
- I checked several articles to verify the price is accurate. Goodbye Kansas is one of the leading SFX houses in the world and has a team of ~200.
- The deal seems to highlight the brutal economics of SFX, a low margin services business with “cost plus” payment structures and bidding for contracts that pushes margins toward zero. Plus no financial upside in the film or game projects firms work on.
- Goodbye Kansas lost money the last two years. Turnaround efforts led to revenue in the first 2 months of 2020 of roughly $5m with $500k in EBITDA.
- Bublar listed on Nasdaq First North Growth Market in November 2019.
- Both firms were founded in 2015.
Gaming
- I surveyed 7 VCs on their esports investment interests: Peter Levin (Griffin Gaming), Beth Ferreira (Firstmark), Ethan Kurzweil (Bessemer), Jens Hilgers (Bitkraft), Dough Higgins (Sapphire Sport), Rick Yang (NEA), Kevin Baxpehler (Remagine) >> Read their responses
- Twitch launched a esports directory for users to easily track esports competition schedules. (Read more)
- Microsoft‘s gaming revenue was flat in Q1 (its fiscal Q3). Overall gaming revenue was $2.35b, -1% yoy. (Read more)
- Xbox specifically was +2% yoy with a decline in hardware revenue (due to pricing decreases on older units, it says) and increased for content and services.
- There are now 10m subscribers to its Xbox Game Pass subscription bundle and 90m MAUs for its cloud-streaming service Xbox Live.
- Xbox Xcloud — its new service for cloud streaming Xbox games across devices — has hundreds of thousands of MAUs in its beta.
- Unit 2 Games is releasing its no-code, UGC-driven game design platform platform Crayta this summer, exclusively available on Google Stadia. (Read more)
- Crayta itself is built with Unreal.
- UK-based Unit 2 is led by Richard Smithies and has raised $5m in funding from Makers Fund.
- Ubisoft announced the next title in its Assassin’s Creed franchise, Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla. (Read more)
- Gaming content on YouTube received 17b views in the last week of March, +24% yoy. (Read more)
- There’s been a 60% increase in Call of Duty videos uploaded during the Covid-19 crisis, a much larger jump than content from other games.
AR/VR
- Facebook said its +80% yoy increase in Q1 non-advertising revenue to $287m was primarily due to Oculus sales. (Read more)
- Zuckerberg said FB is trying to produce more Quest headsets faster to keep up with the huge demand. Even before Covid-19 they were selling out frequently.
- Zuckerberg said FB is trying to produce more Quest headsets faster to keep up with the huge demand. Even before Covid-19 they were selling out frequently.
- Magic Leap warns of a critical battery issue. (Read more)
Communications
- Guilded, an in-game chat platform, raised a $7m Series A from Matrix Partners (Ilya Sukhar), Initialized Capital, Susa Ventures, and Sterling VC. (Read more)
- Facebook Q1 revenue was $17.7b. (Read more)
- Ad revenue was down 19% from Q4, compared to Q1 2019’s 11% drop from Q4 2018.
- 1,734m DAUs and 2,603m MAUs…increased DAUs and MAUs in every region from Q4.
- 67% DAU:MAU ratio. It’s been 66% for the last 2 years.
- Twitter Q1 earnings: $808m revenue (+3% yoy). US revenue grew 8% yoy while international revenue shrank 4% yoy. (Read more)
- 84% of revenue was from ads, the rest mostly from data licensing.
- From March 11 to 31, ad revenue declined 27% yoy.
- It reported a +8% increase in mDAUs (“monetizable DAUs”) to 164m
Dealmakers
- FuboTV, the sports-centric OTT service, named Edgar Bronfman Jr. its executive chairman. The former Warner Music CEO is an investor in FuboTV personally and through his VC firm (w/ Daniel Leff) Waverly Capital. (Read more)
Layoffs/furloughs: NY Post, Ticketmaster, ViacomCBS