Yahoo Finance Alphabet (GOOGL) Boosts Sports Streaming With NFL Price Cut
Alphabet’s GOOGL Google is making solid initiatives to strengthen YouTube TV offerings. Its deepening focus on boosting its sports content on YouTube is a plus.
Its continuous efforts to discount the NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube TV remain noteworthy. NFL Sunday Ticket is a package that provides access to out-of-market NFL games to YouTube TV subscribers and general YouTube users.
Recently, the company slashed the NFL Sunday Ticket price to $39 for the rest of the 23/24 NFL regular season. It excludes anything beyond the regular season, such as playoffs.
Along with the NFL RedZone postgame coverage, the price is $44.
The latest price cut follows the first such incident, which happened in November 2023 when Google discounted the NFL Sunday Ticket to $174.
These price cuts are pretty steep compared with the original price of $349, which came on top of the subscription price of YouTube TV.
Alphabet Inc. Price and Consensus
Alphabet Inc. price-consensus-chart | Alphabet Inc. Quote
Alphabet’s Prospects
With the discounting strategy, Google will be able to attract more subscribers to YouTube TV, which will boost its viewer base.
This, in turn, will contribute well to GOOGL’s Other revenues, consisting of Google Play and YouTube non-advertising revenues, which will ultimately drive growth in Alphabet’s Google services’ revenues in the upcoming period.
Strengthening the Google Services segment is expected to benefit GOOGL’s overall performance in the days ahead.
Google Services contributes the most to total revenues and has been Alphabet's primary growth driver. Shares of the company have gained 56.7% over a year, outperforming the S&P 500 index’s rally of 25.2%.
The Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2024 revenues is pegged at $283.39 billion, indicating growth of 11.3% year over year. The figure excludes the effect of Google’s traffic acquisition costs.
The consensus mark for 2024 earnings is pinned at $6.74 per share, indicating growth of 15.6% year over year. The figure moved north by 0.7% in the past 30 days.
Alphabet presently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
Competitive Scenario
With the NFL Sunday Ticket, Google remains well-poised to penetrate the booming sports streaming space.
Per data from GROWTH Market Reports, the global online live video sports streaming market is expected to reach $101.2 billion by 2031, witnessing a CAGR of 24.8% between 2023 and 2031.
Given the upbeat scenario, Alphabet and other companies, including Amazon AMZN, Disney DIS and Comcast CMCSA, are some noteworthy players in this promising market.
Amazon recently revealed leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to improve the streaming of Thursday Night Football (TNF) of NFL on Prime Video.
In this regard, the company came up with TNF’s weekly alternate stream called Prime Vision, which shows various graphics on the screen during the game to allow viewers to see real-time stats and analysis.
The e-commerce giant introduced new features like defensive alerts, Prime Targets, Fourth Down Territory, Field Goal Target Zones and Key Plays, designed to enable fans to dive deeper into the game analytics.
On the other hand, Disney’s focus on sports streaming, particularly Live Sports, remains noteworthy. For instance, ESPN+ streams tournaments like the UFC Lightweight Championship, Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League, Major League Soccer, Grand Slam tennis, Italy’s Serie A soccer and live sporting events, original shows, series and documentaries.
Meanwhile, Peacock, owned by NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast, streams games under the Sunday Night Football package and Premier League Soccer.
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