In the US, the TV OS market is highly competitive, and there’s little room for new entrants because many of the largest TV manufacturers, including Samsung, LG, and Vizio, operate their OS. On top of that, Roku, Google, and Amazon have established relationships with other brands like TCL, Sony and Hisense. But in Europe, the CTV market is different from the US, and this is where Titan, a new TV OS recently launched with Phillips as its main distribution partner, plans to concentrate their focus. In November, I had the chance to sit down with the Titan team in NYC and hear more about their product and their interest in the European market.

In Europe, Phillips has the third largest market share behind Samsung and LG. Connected TV penetration in Europe lags behind the US, and there is an opportunity to grow with many regional brands that don’t have their own OS. In addition to launching with Phillips, Titan also announced a partnership for branded TVs with Curry’s, the largest electronics retailer in the UK. The European advertising market differs substantially from the US since the continent has over three dozen countries and two dozen languages. Titan has built a network of local relationships with advertisers and agencies to create a new marketplace for CTV advertising built upon a robust data platform that complies with EU privacy laws.

Philips already has a partnership with Google TV but will deploy Titan on most of its models for 2024, including its upcoming entry-level Mini LED and LCD TVs, including the PML9009 Xtra Mini-LED and “The One” LCD (also known as the PUS8909). These TV models are expected to make up >60% of the overall volume of TV sales in 2024. Phillips will continue to use Google TV on the newly announced OLED+959 and OLED+909.

TV operating systems are important in the Connected TV ecosystem because they serve as a marketplace for streaming services, FAST channels, data and advertising. Operating systems build revenue off these lines of business and measure their success by growing ARPU. Growing revenue after the retail sale of a television is a trend over the last decade, pioneered by Roku, with many companies following a similar playbook. Margins in the highly competitive TV manufacturing business are shrinking, so having a recurring revenue stream to bolster profitability is necessary. In the case of Titan, they share recurring revenue with the TV manufacturers they partner with.

We have yet to see any company break out TV OS revenue from the rest of their finances, and almost no TV manufacturer breaks out revenue from their FAST offerings aside from Vizio. If I missed numbers from a manufacturer, please let me know in the comments. I don’t know if Titan plans to release any numbers over time, but it would be helpful for the industry to know the actual market size by region based on revenue.

Titan, based in Barcelona, has no plans to enter the US market anytime soon. Following the launch of Europe, the company plans to expand with Philips into Latin America.

Qwilt has announced a deal with Cirion Technologies to deploy Qwilt’s edge cache software and cloud services across Lumen’s former CDN footprint in LATAM. In 2022, Lumen sold its LATAM infrastructure (network, peering, hardware) to Cirion, one of the few Pan-Latin American networks operating one of Latin America’s most interconnected data center platforms, with 18 owned data centers. Their long haul and metro networks comprise 31,000 miles and over 22,000 miles of subsea network, with 13 Tbps of total CDN capacity.

With this partnership, Qwilt gets full LATAM CDN coverage through the Cirion infrastructure and peering in the region. Cirion gets Qwilt CDN tech and access to their SP-embedded edge deployments throughout LATAM. Qwilt will run this CDN service and jointly sell with Cirion, expanding Cirion’s footprint and CDN services in the region. Neither company is disclosing how much total capacity Qwilt will build across Cirion’s network, but we should expect to get more details as their edge services start to roll out this year.

Lumen has started shutting down their CDN. The company was one of the CDNs in the mix, along with Akamai, Amazon, Edgio, Fastly, and Qwilt, for delivering the NFL Wild Card game on Peacock, with the game being the last big event for Lumen’s CDN network.

Now that the game is over, multiple ISPs are reporting that Lumen has stopped sending traffic, and the de-provisioning of their CDN has started. Lumen had recently refreshed some of their CDN hardware, so some assets are expected to be redeployed for Lumen’s Edge Bare Metal product offering. At the peak of their CDN business, Lumen was generating about $200 million in revenue. Once they lost traffic from Apple and later on Disney, the business started to decline.

In August 2022, Lumen sold off their Latin American operations, including all of Lumen’s fiber assets and data centers in Latin America and their subsea assets. In October of last year, Lumen announced the sale of “select” contracts to Akamai, comprised of about 100 enterprise customers and the “end-of-sale of Lumen’s CDN services.”

For a little CDN history lesson (see www.cdnlist.com), in 1999, Sandpiper, one of the earliest CDNs on the internet, was acquired by Digital Island. In 2001, Digital Island was acquired by Cable & Wireless. In 2002, Cable & Wireless withdrew from the U.S. market and sold the U.S. company to SAVVIS. In 2006, SAVVIS excited the CDN business and sold the CDN assets to Level 3. In 2017, Level 3 was acquired by CenturyLink, and in 2020, CenturyLink changed its name to Lumen.

Thanks to Nick Meacham and Chris Stone at SportsPro for having me on their podcast to discuss the latest sports streaming restraints around technology, market drives for business models, viewership numbers, and the fragmentation and frustration of the current sports fan viewing experience. We discuss:

🏈 The impact of tech on the market, i.e., Amazon (TNF), Google (Sunday NFL Ticket), and Apple (Friday Night Baseball). With so many big tech companies involved, why does sports streaming still have many outages and technical problems?

📺 The reason sports content will never go streaming only due to the licensing deals tied to pay TV, which still accounts for around 90% of total viewing hours in the US for live sports.

👸 The challenges Disney will have in offering a second ESPN DTC service from a pricing, packaging, and bundling standpoint.

💲 The high price of sports licensing costs and its impact on any streaming service’s ability to become profitable from sports content alone.

📈 The importance of CDNs that make live sports events possible, their role in the market and why low/ultra-low latency is rarely used for live sports events.

🏎 Recent content licensing deals and the upcoming NBA, Formula 1, and Diamond Sports Group deals being discussed.

I had a great time discussing what’s happening in the sports streaming market. Note: The podcast was recorded three weeks before Peacock’s exclusive NFL Wild Card game, hence why that wasn’t discussed in detail. Listen here: https://www.sportspromedia.com/insights/podcasts/dan-rayburn-hard-truths-about-sports-streaming-media-technology-podcast/

NFL Wild Card game viewership numbers across NBC, FOX, ESPN, and Peacock are out and pay TV saw record viewership. For all the recent talk of NFL streaming, digital viewership makes up less than 10% of all viewers when the game isn’t exclusive to a streaming-only platform. Pay TV still generates the largest viewership for NFL games and sports.

• 🏈 FOX, 43.4 million (peak viewers) FOX Sports NFL Wild Card game on Sunday, January 14, between the Green Bay Packers and Dallas Cowboys peaked at 43.4 million viewers, making it the best Wild Card game for FOX since 2015. FOX does not break out pay TV versus digital viewership for any of their NFL games.
• 🏈 NBC, 38.3 million (peak viewers) NBC Sports NFL Wild Card game on Sunday, January 14, between the Detroit Lions and Los Angeles Rams peaked at 38.3 million viewers across NBC, Peacock, NBC Sports Digital, and NFL Digital platforms. Across Peacock, NBC Sports Digital platforms, and NFL Digital platforms, the AMA for the game was 3.9 million viewers.
• 🏈 ESPN, 28.6 million (viewers) ESPN’s NFL Wild Card game on Monday, January 15, between the Philadelphia Eagles and Tampa Bay Buccaneers generated more than 28.6 million viewers across ESPN, ABC, ESPN2, ESPN+ and NFL+, ESPN’s second most-watched NFL playoff game. ESPN does not break out pay TV versus digital viewership for any of their NFL games.
• 🏈 Peacock, 24.6 million (peak viewers) Peacock’s NFL Wild Card game on Saturday, January 13, between the Chiefs and Dolphins peaked at 24.6 million viewers across Peacock, NBC stations in Miami and Kansas City and on mobile with NFL+. Peacock had 16.3 million concurrent devices.

Some key takeaways from the NFL and Peacock media call from January 2024:

• The Wild Card game was not part of NBCU’s overall NFL package. NBC Sports executive said, “This is not something for NBC. We bid on it for Peacock separately.”
• NFL’s EVP of Media Distribution: “As it relates to the Wild Card game exclusively, we’re excited to continue the conversation. This is a deal for this year, but it’s an NFL Playoff game. I expect there will be a lot of interest in it.”
• Media question for NFL exec. How much will viewership determine whether you would continue going forward with a game to a streamer in the postseason? Answer: “Certainly, viewership will be one of them. That will be just one of the criteria we think about and look at the opportunities we have going forward.”

Big news from Diamond Sports Group. The company has entered into a Restructuring Support Agreement (RSA) with its largest creditor groups, enabling Diamond to emerge from bankruptcy. As part of the terms, Amazon has also committed to making a minority investment (no details were given, and the media is reporting different numbers ranging from $100M to $125M) in Diamond and entering into a commercial arrangement to provide access to Diamond’s services via Prime Video. Under this arrangement, Prime Video will become Diamond’s primary partner through which customers can purchase DTC access to stream local Diamond channels.

Diamond owns the streaming rights to 5 of the 9 MLB teams it is still broadcasting, including the Detroit Tigers, the Kansas City Royals, the Miami Marlins, the Milwaukee Brewers, and the Tampa Bay Rays. It is unclear if viewers in those markets would need to pay more than the Prime membership to access those games. Diamond said additional details regarding pricing and availability will be announced later.

Customers will be able to access all local DTC content, including live MLB, NBA, and NHL games, and pre-and post-game programming for the teams for which Diamond retains DTC rights through Prime Video Channels. However, there is no guarantee that MLB, NBA and the NHL will continue to work with Bally Sports past this year.

Diamond also announced that it has an agreement in principle with its parent, Sinclair, to settle the pending lawsuit between the companies and the other named defendants. Under the settlement, among other things, Sinclair will pay Diamond $495 million in cash and provide ongoing management and transition services to support Diamond’s reorganization and separation from Sinclair’s operations.

The court must approve any proposed deal since Diamond is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

I am live blogging Peacock’s exclusive NFL Wild Card game between the Chiefs and Dolphins, kicking off at 8 pm ET and monitoring the stream across a dozen devices 20+ devices, including multiple models of Apple TV, Fire TV, Roku, Samsung, and LG TVs. Also, various iPads, iPhones, and MacBooks. All devices are connected via ethernet except for iPads and iPhones. I’m never running more than 3 streams at a time and have two internet connections, Verizon and Optimum, at 300 Mbps or greater.

Local NBC stations in Kansas City and Miami will air the game; otherwise, you need a subscription to Peacock or, for viewing on mobile devices, NFL+. Peacock offers a special price of $29.99 for 12 months and a 50% discount for new subscribers using the code PEACOCK2024.

Peacock’s exclusive regular season NFL game last month on December 13 averaged 7.2 million viewers across Peacock, NFL+ and local NBC TV stations in Los Angeles and Buffalo. Adding out-of-home viewership, the game peaked at 8.3 million viewers. The game peaked with 5.7 million concurrent devices using Peacock, and Peacock’s President said they are preparing to handle 5-6 times that number for the playoff game. I do not expect NBC Sports to break out Peacock-only viewers, but I will guess that the average viewership across local TV and digital platforms combined (Peacock and NFL+) is 15-20 million viewers. Peacock had some technical issues during their December game, mostly with what looked like HDR support, so I am hoping they have that all resolved now for the Wild Card game.

Sunday, Jan 14, 10:33 PM ET: Viewership numbers are out. Nielsen says the NFL Wild Card game of the Chiefs and Dolphins had an AMA of approximately 23 million viewers across Peacock, NBC stations in Miami and Kansas City, and on mobile with NFL+. Across all platforms combined, the game peaked at 24.6 million viewers and reached 27.6 million viewers. NBC Sports says Peacock delivered its largest single-day ever in audience usage, engagement, and time spent, with a record 16.3 million concurrent devices. (No details were given on engagement or time spent)

NBC Sports says Peacock “set the record for the most-streamed live event in U.S. history” and “drove the Internet to its largest U.S. usage ever on a single day and the largest Internet event ever, consuming 30% of Internet traffic during the game.” But NBC Sports doesn’t say the source for this statement or the data they are referencing.

As expected, the NBC Sports press release said Comcast “executed flawlessly” with their “streaming experience,” ignoring every user who experienced technical issues. No doubt the game was big, but ignoring all the technical problems encountered by viewers is disappointing.

11:20 PM ET: Game over. NBC Sports will put out viewership numbers in a few days, but that one metric alone doesn’t allow us to judge the success or failure of Peacock’s streaming experience for their exclusive NFL Wild Card game. We don’t know and will never be told what percentage of total viewers had a poor viewing experience versus users who saw no buffering, audio sync issues, application problems, login and billing issues, or other reported problems. The larger the audience, the more technical issues we would expect to see. Like all of these streaming events, we won’t get details on the average bitrate, average viewing time, profit and loss, or other methodology we need to judge the actual success or failure of the event, short or long-term.

I saw far too many problems reported online of varying kinds across all quarters of the game, more than I would have liked to see. It is also important to remember that some viewers signed up for Peacock for this one game, making it feel like a PPV event to them. Some will cancel their Peacock subscription now that the game is over and churn off immediately. So, it will be interesting to see Peacock’s subscription number for Q1 when Comcast reports earnings in April.

I expect the NFL and NBC Sports to call the game a huge success and use lots of grand marketing terms to say how great it was for the league and the future of the NFL and probably even call out that they reached a younger audience. In reality, younger fans are not hanging out on a Saturday night on Peacock or Friday nights on Apple TV+ for Friday Night Baseball. Peacock, Apple TV, and Amazon Prime Video are services, not platforms, and younger sports fans spend their time on platforms like Twitch, TikTok, Discord, and YouTube.

All that aside, we must be honest with ourselves in the industry. Streaming media is not a replacement for broadcast TV regarding reliability, ease of use and quality of the video experience delivered. That’s not a knock on the technology or use case, just reality.

11:011 PM ET: It’s not surprising, but there are many reports of bars nationwide not having the game available for viewing. For a commercial establishment to carry the game, they must get the Peacock Sports Pass from EverPass for $206.99 for the year if paid monthly or $176.99 annually.

10:58 PM ET: From Q3 kickoff to the start of Q4, Peacock ran 11 ad slots, totaling 4 minutes, based on what I recorded using a timer. From Q1 to Q3, I’ve counted more than 35 different brands running ads.

10:15 PM ET: I’ve been busy looking at comments being sent to me along with screenshots, so I haven’t had a chance yet to check the Peacock app on Samsung or LG TVs. I’m also getting a lot of messages on LinkedIn that I am trying to follow up on. There is a lot more I wanted to look at and test across all these devices, but I just never had the time to get to it.

9:53 PM ET: From the start of Q2 to the halftime show, Peacock ran 15 ad slots, totaling 4 minutes and 30 seconds, based on what I recorded using a timer. From kickoff until the halftime show, they ran 38 ad slots, totaling 12 minutes and 15 seconds. All ads looked burned in, and I did not see DAI being used.

9:43 PM ET: With regards to latency, when compared to live radio and users in Kansas City giving me reports from their local TV feed, the streaming latency is as low as 10 seconds and as high as 25 seconds, depending on the device. I saw the highest latency on Roku, which is normal. Fire TV was a little faster for me than Apple TV.

9:20 PM ET: On the video delivery side, Akamai, Amazon, Edgio, Fastly, Lumen and Qwilt are in the mix for delivery, as reported by what I am seeing and what ISPs and others have told me. Two ISPs told me the game has now hit the highest recorded amount of traffic on their network. Comcast recently said that Amazon’s TNF game “comprises roughly 25 percent of all internet traffic on Thursday nights” and that it single-handedly “moved peak data usage on our broadband network from Sunday night to Thursday night.” It will be interesting to see the numbers from ISPs when the game is over.

9:08 PM ET: Regarding problems some viewers see, anything tied to the Peacock app, audio and color issues are on Peacock’s end. But buffering and choppy video could be last-mile issues with ISPs. It’s always hard to know for sure. I don’t know what percentage of users are having problems, so I have not used the words “widespread” or the like since I don’t know how many users are having problems and how many are not.

8:58 PM ET: From kickoff to the end of Q1, Peacock ran 23 ad slots, totaling 7 minutes and 45 seconds, based on what I recorded using a timer.

8:46 PM ET: Across six Twitter hashtags and Peacock accounts, I can’t keep up with all the negative comments, with many posting images or videos (2) (3) of the problems they are seeing. My stream has been good on Fire TV and Apple TV, but I am seeing some audio sync issues on Fire TV.

8:24 PM ET: I’m seeing complaints from users experiencing audio syncing issues, error messages, problems with colors, choppy video, and lots of audio complaints. Some users report payment errors as well.

8:00 PM ET: The stream is live and looks good for me on a few of the devices I have tested it on. Across iPads, the stream is six seconds behind the stream on Apple TV and Fire TV. For the Peacock stream of the Cleveland and Houston game, the stream averaged 15 seconds behind the pay TV feed.

7:17 PM ET: I am monitoring 12 accounts, hashtags, and discussion threads related to the NFL, NBC Sports, and Peacock across Twitter and reddit, in real-time across three iPads, seeing as many comments as possible.

5:52 PM ET: Scammers are hard at work today, knowing many consumers are seeking details about Peacock’s exclusive NFL Wild Card game. Consumers who don’t know any better are coming across multiple fake Peacock websites and getting emails that offer a 7-day free trial to Peacock, except all the offers are fake, and Peacock offers no free trial. I see many comments across the web with people complaining to Peacock, who has to explain that it’s not a legitimate offer. One of the websites is peacockfreetrial, whose name server is in Kenya.

10:37 AM ET: Peacock is already trending on Twitter with many angry comments about consumers having to pay for the game. I know Peacock doesn’t think of this as a PPV event, but for many football fans who only want to see the game and not add another OTT subscription to their household, that’s what it is: a PPV fee to see an NFL Wild Card game. Fans shouldn’t blame Peacock; the NFL sold the game off to them.

NBC Sports executives are reinforcing that this is not a PPV event since a Peacock subscription gives you access to other live sports content, like NCAA Women’s Basketball and WWE, but many football fans see no value in that. There is a difference between an NFL fan and a general sports fan. I watch some NFL games but would never be interested in basketball or WWE content, while other consumers would. But the point isn’t how NBC Sports thinks of their Peacock service; all that matters is how consumers view it. And many consumers are referencing this NFL Wild Card game as a PPV event, whether NBC Sports agrees with that or not.