Weekly News 11/15
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FuboTV's Trials and Tribulations: Do TV Subscribers Stay After Their Free Trial?
What does growth look like for one of the biggest sports properties in the world? It looks like a world tour, and the NFL touched down in Munich, Germany last weekend for the country’s first time hosting a regular season game. Survey results earlier this year showed that American Football ranks second behind soccer in regards to popularity among sports fans in Germany, making it a prime target to grow the game internationally. If any skepticism remains that American football wouldn’t translate, some three million ticket requests were recorded for the Seattle Seahawks and Tampa Bay Buccaneers game at Allianz Arena (which holds 75,000).
The game between the Seahawks and Buccaneers was only available through premium subscriptions, like NFL Network, DAZN, and FuboTV, rather than linear outlets. These services offer promotions and trials to entice customers to explore their offerings. FuboTV, for example, offers a 7-day free trial before enrolling users in a selected-package. Knowing this, we started asking ourselves “how frequently do people keep their subscriptions after the free trial?”
*Our data comes from a random panel of 10 million credit & debit card holders in the United States. Transactions portrayed here are from 1/1/2017 through 11/4/2022.
In order to assess the impact of the free trial model, we segmented FuboTV subscribers by their subscription type over the course of 2022. We define these subscriber types as:
Non-Trial Subscribers: Sign up for a package without going through the trial process
Single-Trial Subscribers: Only sign up for the free trial, then cancel the subscription.
Short-Term Subscribers: Subscribed for less than a year
Long-Term Subscribers: Subscribed (or subscribing) for a year or more
Multiple Trial Users: Figured out how to have more than one free trial but never fully subscribed
Focusing on 2022, two things stand out at first. Mid-September is by far the most popular time FuboTV subscribers signed up, regardless of their long term buying intentions. We see a huge volume of single trial users that do not fulfill their subscription after, perhaps to either give it a test run or just want to watch a single event that FuboTV covers, to the tune of more than a third of our FuboTV customer data is composed of this group.
Fan acquisition is only half the battle. Platforms like FuboTV have clearly refined their strategy to include multiple entry points, which we describe as the types of subscribers. The next step is to refine their fan retention strategy. Content platforms across the board struggle with this problem of fan retention, and those who are able to crack the code without sacrificing acquisitions will be poised to win the Fluid Fan.
Women's Sports Highlight At Hockey Hall Of Fame
Sports Innovation Lab CEO, Angela Ruggiero, was in Toronto at the Hockey Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony on Monday to celebrate the Class of 2022. This year's Class included Riika Sallinen, who will join Angela and eight other women as ninth women's hockey player to be inducted into the HHOF.
Sallinen is regarded as one of the greatest players in women’s hockey history. Sallinen represented Finland at the IIHF Women’s European Championships (winning three times), participated in eight IIHF Ice Hockey Women’s World Championships (winning six bronze medals and one silver), and participated in four Olympic Games (winning two bronze medals). In 2008-09, the Finnish Ice Hockey Association introduced the Riikka Nieminen Award, which is given to the Naisten Liiga Player of the Year. Riikka Sallinen was one of the first two women inducted into the Finnish Hockey Hall of Fame in 2007. She was inducted into the IIHF Hall of Fame in 2010. She was only the fourth woman and the first European woman to receive this honor. In January 2020, her number was retired by JYP Jyväskylä, the team with which she spent most of her career in the Finnish League. That same year she was also inducted into the Finnish Sports Hall of Fame.
Other Nominees in the 2022 class include Daniel Alfredsson, Herb Carnegie, Roberto Luongo, Daniel Sedin, and Henrik Sedin. Congratulations to all the nominees!
If you're ready to create breakthrough fan experiences and connect with the Fluid Fan through technology, visit our website sportsilab.com or email info@sportsilab.com!