Future of TV Briefing: ViX COO Rafael Urbina on why TelevisaUnivision’s streamer is loading up on live sports

This week’s Future of TV Briefing features a Q&A with ViX COO Rafael Urbina about TelevisaUnivision’s deal to stream MLB postseason games and how live sports is boosting the streamer’s ad-supported subscriber base.

• The streaming game
Primetime TV’s upfront slump, Peacock’s Olympic subscriber haul, Chick-Fil-A Plus and more

The streaming game

Having wrapped its “Summer of Soccer,” TelevisaUnivision’s streaming service ViX is heading into baseball for the fall.

The Spanish-language media company has signed a deal with Major League Baseball to air the league’s playoff games on ViX as well as its traditional TV networks. In an interview, ViX COO Rafael Urbina discussed why ViX is loading up on live sports.

“We’re spending a lot of money on sports. Sports rights are not cheap,” said Urbina.

While he declined to say how much money TelevisaUnivision is paying for the MLB rights, he did describe the value of having those rights when it comes to helping to grow ViX’s ad-supported subscriber base and its overall monthly audience of 50 million people.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Let’s talk about this deal with Major League Baseball that includes Spanish-language streaming rights for postseason games. Will all games airing on TelevisaUnivision’s traditional TV networks be simulcast on ViX?

Generally that’s more the direction we’re going. While I can’t say that all of them will, it’s likely that that’ll end up being the case. A lot of those decisions end up being closer to the day and date. But I would say that in general we’re starting to see simulcast work.

What are the considerations that go into making those calls?

The [pay-TV] ecosystem is changing. The streaming ecosystem is changing. A lot of this has been learning and trying different things and figuring out how the audience responds. We’re getting to the point where we’re getting close to having a lot of conviction around this idea that these two distinct ecosystems are forming and we can simulcast successfully without hurting one or the other. And if we really want to get full penetration, you almost have to simulcast. More and more, that’s the direction we’re heading into.

Do you expect there to be any differences between games aired on traditional TV versus those streaming on ViX in terms of the broadcasts themselves, the viewer experience?

For now, we’re simulcasting the same feed. But we actually just had a meeting — we have rights for the World Cup in Mexico. So we’re preparing for that in a little less than two years. And one of the things we’re talking about is what about an alternative broadcast. How do we get more of a Twitch-type experience around some of these live games that will attract younger audiences. That’s something we’re definitely thinking about and evaluating: partnering with up-and-coming talent, whether they’re influencers or in the broadcast world, just up-and-coming talent that normally you would not see on traditional broadcasts.

You mentioned more of a Twitch-type experience. Could you help me understand what that could look like?

On ViX that probably looks with some sort of talking head over the game and maybe split screens where you actually have a commentator’s facial reactions to the action and not just listening to their commentary but actually seeing them react and interact around the game. Commentators become much of a bigger part of the experience.

During a company earnings call earlier this year, TelevisaUnivision CEO Wade Davis said the company’s main focus when it comes to sports rights is soccer. So then why go after MLB rights and, in particular, to secure those rights for ViX as opposed to just the traditional TV networks?

We recognize that the Hispanic market is very diverse. It’s not a monolithic market. So we want to make sure that we address the entirety of the U.S. Hispanic market. While soccer is by far the most popular sport in the world — not only for Hispanics but particularly for Hispanics — we also recognize that baseball is increasingly a Hispanic sport and has a huge following among the Hispanic audience.

What are the plans for driving people, especially non-subscribers, to ViX to watch these MLB games when they start airing later this year?

There will be quite a lot of outreach with our partners. Whenever we have marquee live sports content, most of our partners want to feature it aggressively on their interfaces. We’ll also invest in marketing dollars against it on those platforms and elsewhere. So you’ll see a pretty big marketing push on our end to let the world know that this is on ViX.

ViX has been airing major sports — I mean, just this year with Copa America and Euro 2024. Big sporting events available for streaming. What have you learned in terms of what works or, just as importantly, what doesn’t work when it comes to driving viewership to streaming for sports?

There’s definitely a challenge in our industry where audiences are becoming increasingly frustrated with their content being disaggregated across all these different apps. So there’s definitely a lot of work that has to happen on our PR/marketing side of things to try to get the word out there.

Now, with rights like Copa America and Euro, we found actually the opposite. The content is so powerful that consumers will seek it out very aggressively. So it almost cuts through some of the friction that’s inherent to the streaming business.

So these games will carry ads, whether someone’s an ad-free subscriber or on the ad-supported tier. What’s the ad sales strategy? Like, will this be inventory that’s sold as a standalone or will it just be part of a broader pool? And then will there be any specific ad formats or ad opportunities unique to the MLB games?

I don’t know that we’ve developed anything that’s unique to the MLB games. We have the same standard units that we’re going to run on ViX. Specifically dynamic ad insertion, we can actually serve ads dynamically into those ad breaks. We do have some different features or ad units we can bring to bear. Things like pause ads. You have things that happen only in streaming, that can’t happen on linear, that we offer.

Correct me if I’m wrong: ViX has 50 million monthly active users. What’s the paid subscriber count currently?

We’re not sharing subscriber numbers yet. It’s growing really nicely. We’re in a great trajectory. We’re way ahead of our plan.

The ad-supported subscription tier just launched this year. What’s the breakdown in terms of share of subscribers between the ad-free tier and the ad-supported tier?

It’s still primarily the ad-free tier because it has a two-year head start. The majority of subscribers are there.

Having major sporting events that are available on ViX, I imagine those are driving new subscribers. Do you see those new subscribers primarily signing up for the ad-supported tier or the ad-free tier?

When we have big events like that, the ad-supported tier can spike, especially if you’re a sports-centric subscriber. I think the expectation [as a sports-centric subscriber] is I’m going to get ads anyway, so why not subscribe to the ad-supported tier. In terms of the ratio of new subscribers going to one or the other, the ad-supported tier can get a bump when you have those peaks.

What’s the average subscriber churn that ViX sees overall? And with a sports subscriber, what’s the churn you see to quantify the impact sports has on subscriber churn?

We’re not disclosing churn numbers. But I can say that we were happy to see that the retention on those sports subscribers — that huge spike of subscribers that we saw coming for the summer [soccer] tournaments — saw very similar retention profiles as a regular subscriber. Some of that is we have sports always on. So sports is always a big part of our mix.

What we’ve heard

“Every platform is trying to — not confine — but lock in creators and convert them into, like, sales channels way more than before. And I don’t know for how long we’ll have link-outs that work for sure. Social media platforms will soon, I think, try more and more to confine creators and their content within their own space.”

— Talent management executive

Numbers to know

38%: Percentage share of this year’s upfront commitments estimated to be earmarked for streaming.

23%: Percentage share of TV show creators for the 2022-23 season who were women.

66%: Percentage share of U.S. TV viewers that use a free, ad-supported streaming TV service each month.

What we’ve covered

Over a year and a half later, Netflix still has a long road ahead to get advertisers on board:

• Netflix has reportedly slashed it ad prices to around $29.
• Netflix claims to have 40 million monthly active users on its ad-supported tier.

Read more about Netflix here.

Agencies create full-time roles for creators as ‘pirates’ of marketing:

• Holding company agencies and influencer shops are hiring creators for roles ranging from creative and strategy directors to brand community managers.
• While some are hiring creators for full-time roles, others are signing them to a mix of long-term contracts and shorter, flexible jobs.

Read more about agencies’ creator-pirates here.

Demure trend sparks brands’ acknowledgment of creators’ contributions to viral trends:

• To avoid being seen as brand-jacking, some marketers are enlisting the influencers behind trends.
• Creators are also pressing to be credited and compensated for the trends they inspire.

Read more about the demure trend here.

Meet the company helping creators and brands reach audiences in China:

• East Goes Global is a company that helps influencers and celebrities get in front of Chinese audiences on apps like WeChat and Weibo.
• The talent management firm manages 700 Chinese channels for Western influencers and celebrities.

Read more about East Goes Global here.

Warner Bros. Discovery International and CNN are extending audience targeting tools in bid for more CTV share:

• WBD’s AIM platform enables the company to target ads based on viewers’ viewing and web behavior, among other categories.
• It’s unclear how many unique individuals are in WBD’s dataset.

Read more about WBD International and CNN here.

What we’re reading

Paramount’s other bidder bails:

A week after bidding to buy Paramount away from Skydance Media, Edgar Bronfman Jr. has decided never mind, according to The New York Times. This most likely means Paramount will end up with Skydance, though who knows, given how this whole ordeal has been going.

Primetime TV’s upfront slump:

The amount of money advertisers committed toward primetime TV programming in this year’s upfront market declined compared to last year, with advertisers pulling 3.7% of upfront dollars out of primetime TV, according to Variety.

Peacock’s Olympic subscriber haul:

NBCUniversal’s streamer secured 2.8 million new subscribers during the first week of the Summer Olympics, though it remains to be seen how many of the sign-ups will stick, according to Business Insider.

Chick-Fil-A Plus:

Despite how the streaming wars have played out as well as the post-strike cost correction, the fast-food chain has decided that investing in standing up a new streaming service with original programming at traditional TV-level budgets is a good way to sell $6 sandwiches, according to Deadline.

TNT’s post-NBA programming strategy:

With an NBA-sized programming hole to fill, the Warner Bros. Discovery-owned cable TV network is looking to get back into airing original dramas, according to The Wall Street Journal.