Q3 has bucked the cord-cutting trend in recent years, fueled by the NFL, which keeps flexing its muscle as a barometer for TV subscription fortunes
With the third-quarter earnings season set to begin next week for the media sector, investors may be bracing themselves for the video subscriber numbers that could impact pay TV distributors and programmers alike. The first two quarters of the year saw an unmistakable acceleration in the cord-cutting now reaching record levels.
A sign of how the NFL can be used as a barometer for TV subscription fortunes is how most of the league’s TV timeslots are pulling in more viewers than in recent years, led by the tremendous performance of the 4:25 p.m. Sunday National game slot shared between Fox and CBS. Unless the hypothesis that only existing pay TV subscribers are watching more NFL is true, some of the influx of new subscribers coming in will be driven by NFL games.
It's the virtual MVPD services that get the lion's share of new subscribers compared with their counterparts, the more traditional and expensive pay TV services. The VMVPDs offer monthly — read: flexible — subscriptions, allowing consumers to sign up for the season.