• by Karlene Lukovitz  @KLmarketdaily, November 6, 2023

FuboTV reported $30.3 million in North American ad revenue in the third quarter — up 34% compared to the year-ago quarter. 

Advertising is still a small channel for the sports-focused streaming service compared to subscriptions, which generated $312.5 million in North America in the quarter, representing 43% YoY growth.

But Fubo’s increased emphasis on direct IO sales and programmatic guaranteed buys, in addition to building on standard programmatic by offering custom, addressable ad packages around marquee events, helped drive continued growth despite a challenging first half advertising climate, co-founder and CEO David Gandler said in the earnings call. 

The retail, e-comm and auto categories, along with home and garden and pharma, saw strong growth in the period, with some weakness in tech, insurance and financial, according to CFO John Janedis. Fubo expects Q4 ad growth to skee growth closer to the 5% seen in Q2, he said. 

Fubo beat overall expectations in Q3, raised its full-year guidance, and saw its stock jump 35% in early trading on Friday, following the earnings call. Total revenue grew 43%, to $320.9 million, net loss narrowed by $21 million, to $84.4 million, and per-share loss was $0.29, compared to a $0.57 loss in the year-ago quarter. 

Subscriptions grew 20% in North America, to 1.48 million, and grew 15% in the rest of the world, to 411,000. Average revenue per user/ARPU reached a new high of $83.51 in North America and $6.98 in the rest of the world. 

Fubo sees aggregation — and specifically “super aggregation” as the future of the industry and its own business, Gandler said. 

“The cable TV and streaming space experienced a true inflection point during the third quarter, with the creation of new content distribution models following the Charter-Disney dispute,” he said. “Since the first quarter of 2021, we have stated that the industry would see a shift from unbundling of content back to aggregation. More recently, many in the industry have called it ‘The Great Rebundling.’ We have been steadfast in this position… and are confident that bundling is the best way for consumers to extract value while providing media companies a profitable path to monetizing their content portfolios and sports contracts.” 

In the new phase, super aggregation, distribution platforms are starting to package content in different ways and deliver it to consumers at multiple price points. “This could mean an entry-level AVOD or FAST tier to a skinny bundle comprised of multiple premium channels and ‘plus’ services to the full virtual MVPD bundle, with AI of course contributing to a personalized streaming experience,” Gandler said. 

Fubo is “well on [its] way” to becoming a super aggregator, he said. Its aggregated sports-first offering, coupled with diverse news and entertainment programming, is delivered through a single app that is customized to users. 

“We expect to deliver an even more personalized Fubo experience as we focus on our technology advantage in creating must-have product features, like we did with Multiview and 4K streaming,” Gandler said. “First on our roadmap is Playlists, which, leveraging our proprietary video AI technology, will allow the user to view and select the most important moments of live sports events recorded on their DVRs.” 

For example, a user will be able to choose just the scoring drives from a recorded football game, or all of the three-point shots from a recorded basketball game. 

“We believe it’s this compelling value proposition, aggegrated content delivered through a personalized streaming experience that will make Fubo the gateway to television,” Gandler said.