FuboTV moves beyond soccer with $35 sports streaming service
Cord-cutting is the hardest for TV viewers who like live events. For many viewers, that means sports.
FuboTV wants to be the go-to option for sports fans who don't want to pay the full cost for traditional cable. The streaming service, which has carried channels tailored to soccer fans for the past two years, announced the addition of about 50 channels covering a swath of sports and entertainment on Wednesday.
The streaming pay-TV service inked deals with Fox Networks Group, NBCUniversal, A+E Networks, Crown Media Family Networks, Fuse Media and NBA TV. The service is still focused on sports, with deals with Fox and NBC providing access to regional sports networks. The new version of the service will launch in beta over the next few weeks.
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"We've had a highly targeted service," FuboTV CEO David Gandler told Mashable. "We're doing our best to target specific users."
A FuboTV subscription will come with cross-platform DVR, video on demand, and in-browser streaming. The service streams on Apple, Android or Windows devices and can be linked to a TV with Apple TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV or Chromecast.
The new service will cost $34.99 a month for the first year, with an eventual price of $49.99. That's around the same price as skinny bundle competitors, like Sling TV's $40 a month and $25 a month options, a $29 service from Dish and a $35 introductory version from DirecTV.
Those services have also tried to appeal to distinct audiences. Dish, for example, offers $10 themed add-on packages, including one similarly targeted to sports fans.
"It's a very competitive space. Everybody has to try to figure out what it is that consumers require," Gandler said.
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But at FuboTV, what's good for sports fans might be bad for soccer fans. With the upgraded version of its service, FuboTV will phase out its $9.99 soccer-only subscription.
The soccer streaming service had gained 71,000 subscribers as of June. Its most high-profile moment came during this month's El Clásico soccer match, when Real Madrid played FC Barcelona and 62,000 people tuned in via FuboTV. (About 243,000 people per minute on average watched Twitter's NFL stream earlier this year.)
FuboTV is hoping to convert its soccer fans to full subscribers. The service's subscriber base is 90 percent male, and the non-sports channels included in the company's new bundle were chosen to appeal to that audience. Seventy-five percent of subscribers fall between 18 and 34.
"We're very focused on a particular audience we've acquired," Gandler said. "We believe there's probably another 400,000 to 1 million of those customers sitting on the sidelines waiting for something to be built for them."
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