Dish Network's Sling TV streaming service is "hoping that the coming March Madness college basketball tournament will drive more growth" after a recent spike in subscribers was aided by the by the college football playoffs, according to Shalini Ramachandran of the WALL STREET JOURNAL. Sources said that Sling TV currently has "more than 600,000 subscribers." The service had an initial disclosure of 169,000 customers when it launched last March. There is now "increasing attention in the industry on the $20-a-month streaming service's subscriber uptake -- and that of other slimmed down bundles of channels -- because of pressure on the traditional pay-TV business." ESPN and other channels carried on Sling TV have "touted the service as important to powering their subscriber growth as people cut the cord and drop their traditional pay-TV packages." The service currently "streams about 20 channels" and offers tiers of additional channels "in various genre-based packs, such as sports." Sling TV CEO Roger Lynch said that the "vast majority of its customers are not currently pay-TV subscribers" (WALL STREET JOURNAL 2/19).
SAME AS IT EVER WAS: Wasserman Chair & CEO Casey Wasserman on Thursday at Re/Code's Code/Media conference discussed skinny bundles and said, "Everyone is talking about the degradation of a bundle and yet what they're moving to is a different kind of bundle, and the first thing they try to get as part of that bundle is sports. So it's a little ironic that people are running from the idea, but yet ultimately having to use sports as the key to engaging people going forward. The big transition for media companies is going to be today they are B-to-B companies. They sell their product to a handful of aggregators. I do believe those aggregators will change. But there is a part of their business that is going to be direct to consumer and that transition will be complicated and challenging. It certainly creates lots of opportunities” (RECODE.net, 2/18).
