Providing market intelligence for more than 35 years

In The News

WWE Is Laying the Smackdown on the World

The market’s enthusiasm for WWE stems largely from its lucrative TV contracts, combined with its early success in direct-to-consumer streaming TV apps. In 2014 the company made a risky move, deciding essentially to cannibalize its traditional pay-per-view business. Instead of paying their cable companies one-time fees to see WWE’s marquee events—say, $44.99 for the Royal Rumble—fans would be encouraged to subscribe to a streaming video service, the WWE Network, and pay a monthly fee. After some early turbulence, the move is paying off. Roughly 1.5 million people now hand over $9.99 a month for the WWE Network, making it the 11th-most-popular streaming video service in the U.S., according to Parks Associates, and the second-most-popular, after Major League Baseball’s, in the “sports-related” category.

From the article "WWE Is Laying the Smackdown on the World" by Felix Gillette and Kim Bhasin.

Previously In The News

Sonos Welcomes Devs With Open APIs

The Sonos Sound Platform allows the company not only to better serve its installed base, but also broaden its product portfolio, making its brand more attractive to high-end customers, said Brad Russe...

Smart Homes: The Power, the Pleasure and the Pain

Amazon's servers were down for a large part of the morning on the day the outage occurred, taking Alexa-powered devices out of commission. Incidents like this may occur more often as the popularity of...

A Home Robot Could Be Amazon's Next Gamble

Robot vacuum cleaners represent a thin market sliver, according to Parks Associates. They can be found in just 5-6 percent of broadband households. "It's not a breakout product, but it's far and ah...

Streamer eyes yardage as 68% of US households watch NFL

The extent of the opportunity for the soon to be announced NFL+ app, which opens the possibility that all games in America’s most popular sport, could be streamed direct-to-consumer, has been revealed...