Winning the Streaming Wars Without Any Content

Despite numerous articles over the years declaring the “streaming wars” to be over, a new streaming arms race is currently unfolding as sports start to jump from the sinking ship of linear TV. The same theories are at play as in the previous round: some must-have content will lead one of the major streaming services to dominance over the others. With such high stakes come high price tags. What price wouldn’t a major media company pay if they believed it would put them on top for the next era of media?

Given the current situation in the media industry, specifically the rapid decline of traditional linear TV and the massive amounts that have already been spent developing and marketing new streaming services, every streaming service operator likely feels like it’s in a must-win situation.

But while the bidding begins for sports streaming rights, the previous battles in the streaming wars should have taught us that that these wars are not winnable. Just as hot scripted content never delivered streaming dominance or even a profitable business to the big streaming services, a deal with the right sports league isn’t likely to do so either.

Despite all the focus on luring consumers with must-watch TV, the reality is this: to the extent that the streaming wars can be won at all, they will likely to be won by software, not content.

The Missed Lesson: Consumers Want It All

If a decade of streaming has taught us anything, it should be this: consumers don’t want to be limited to a single provider. That’s why the “walled garden” approach will never work. We’ve got plenty of evidence of that already. Even with mega-hit shows like HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” the most die-hard fans of the show still have their media routines, which include shows from across the cable dial, with little loyalty to the networks that air them.

Sure, that consumer will pay for Max to watch their favorite series, but that doesn’t mean they’ll forget about their other favorites. Maybe they’ve got a kid that loves Disney movies, or follow another series like Paramount’s “Yellowstone”.

The result is what we’ve seen from consumers already. Rather than pay for everything they want to watch, they binge and bail. Warner Bros. Discovery only has that Game of Thrones fan locked down for as long as it takes them to watch their way through the series, then they’re likely to cancel until a new season comes out, and subscribe to something else in the meantime.

Perhaps the media companies are banking on sports, with their short shelf-life, being immune to these sorts of thrifty tricks. But the same underlying problem remains. A viewer in Miami is likely to want to watch their Dolphins, Heat, and Marlins games, whichever streaming service they happen to be on. But that doesn’t mean that viewer is now going to be any more willing to pay for three or more streaming services in perpetuity to do it.

How Software Will Win the Streaming Wars

While the problems with the current approach are apparent, the current landscape has been established, and it’s not going to be undone, even if it isn’t working. With billions of dollars having been sunk into the development of these streaming services and linear TV in steep decline, there’s no going back.

With content already spread across so many different competing sources, and no hope for any of those sources to somehow “win,” software takes center stage. With the fragmentation of content now a fact of life, software solutions are the only way consumers can get the easy experience that they want. With that in mind, a company doesn’t need to “own” the rights to any of the content, they only need to provide the consumer with convenient access to a legal source. In fact, given the high costs associated with creating and licensing content, it may be better not to have that responsibility.

Aggregation has long been FreeCast’s approach to this challenge. FreeCast gives consumers a single interface through which they can access all the free FAST and AVOD content out there, from all the different sources it may come from. For premium content, FreeCast gives users their options to access it, allowing them to choose between paying for an SVOD service that may carry it or one-time pay-per-view options.

Other tech firms in the online video space like Amazon, Google, Roku, and others also offer varying degrees of integration for content from others’ platforms. None of these solutions are perfect, but they are a step forward. For a streaming product to win over consumers, and in doing so “win” the streaming wars, it simply has to have content from multiple providers. For tech firms that aren’t native to the media business, this is easier, and for the giant media empires with their long-standing battle lines, it may not be possible at all.

Thriving as Content Companies

All this is not to say that things are hopeless for the traditional media industry titans. But they must shift their focus from fighting a futile war and identify how to thrive in this new landscape, or perhaps think about how they might position themselves for what comes next. In the streaming wars, they don’t have to be the victors to get a share of the spoils.

Perhaps the best way for these companies to prosper is to get back to doing what they do best. In other words, get out of the technology and distribution businesses and focus on creating content. Let a new generation of distribution companies pick up where cable and satellite TV left off, and work with them the same way. This will allow a digital equivalent of the old cable dial, where every content provider has its place alongside all the others, and consumers can make their choices without being locked in or out of anything.

FreeCast has these systems ready to go, having spent 10 years and almost $50 million building out these capabilities and making them a turn-key solution for programmers large and small. Other options may emerge in the future, but given the current state of the media industry, few firms have time to wait around to see if a more-perfect option ever comes along.

So far, many of the actions of the biggest players in the industry have only served to exacerbate the problems and increase consumer frustration. With linear TV and its revenue streams now on the brink, this is a critical moment for the whole industry. Disney, Comcast, Warner Bros Discovery, Paramount Global, and others can continue to double-down on what hasn’t worked, or they can change direction in hopes of getting to a strategy that will.