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

Off the Beaten Path: Niche Subscription Video Services Between Boom and Bubble

Are you a fan of horror movies? Anime? Arthouse? British dramas? Whatever your off-the-beaten-path obsession is, there’s a subscription video service just for people like you out there. Parks Assoc...

Streaming TV Is Alphabet’s ‘One That Got Away’

Google’s Chromecast streaming-TV device didn’t lose ground, but given that it’s only utilized as a streaming TV device by 17% of streaming video viewers — despite launching in 2013 with considerably l...

Apple’s Video Streaming Plans: Key Open Questions

There were 221 active over-the-top (OTT) services in the US in 2018, up from 199 in 2017, per Parks Associates. And this figure is slated to increase as Disney, WarnerMedia, NBCUniversal, launch their...

Parks: Fitness still the leading use case for smartwatches

Despite all the convenience features of modern smartwatches, for users it’s still all about fitness, according to recently released data from Parks Associates. The research firm says that tracking...