Weekly Roundup – Week of January 2nd, 2023

"Backers of online sports betting are heading into this year’s legislative session with high hopes that the General Assembly will finally pass legislation to make gaming legal in Georgia.
It’s been more than four years since a U.S. Supreme Court ruling opened the door for states to legalize sports betting, and though there has been legislation introduced in every legislative session since, those efforts have failed to make it out of the Capitol.
But sports betting supporters say they feel good about their chances this year with an ally in the lieutenant governor’s office and support from the governor’s office. Starting his second term, Gov. Brian Kemp has said he would work with legislative leaders on a measure to allow sports betting in 2023 — something he previously opposed — and Lt. Gov.-elect Burt Jones has previously sponsored legislation to make sports betting legal."

"Amazon has rights to Premier League, NFL and various properties.
Content is currently hosted in standard Prime Video app.
Amazon is planning a standalone application for its live sports content as the technology giant doubles down on Prime Video, according to a report by The Information.
The company sees sport as a valuable acquisition and retention tool for its core retail business and has assembled a portfolio of sports rights in key markets.
Prime Video now has the live rights to the National Football League’s (NFL) Thursday night games in the US, the Premier League in the UK, and the National Basketball Association (NBA) in Brazil, while it has also launched a slate of original sports talk shows.
Amazon reportedly believes that shifting this content from the standard Prime Video application to a dedicated destination will aid discoverability, highlight the range of sports content available to subscribers, and allow the company find new ways to monetise its acquisitions.
It is unclear when such an application would launch however, and the firm has yet to decide whether to proceed with the plan."

"Clobbered by the highest inflation rates in four decades and the threat of recession, U.S. financial markets experienced one of their most tumultuous years in recent memory in 2022.
Possessing many of the same characteristics as tech stocks, leading names in the sports betting industry were not immune from the rout. At 2022 lows, top sports betting stocks cratered as much as 80% from their 52-week peak. Smaller-to-mid-size companies were hit just as hard, as impatient investors grew skeptical of the sports betting industry’s ability to turn a profit.
Shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic PASPA decision in 2018, numerous industry experts predicted a massive consolidation among U.S. sportsbook operators. The large-cap stocks, they predicted, would survive beyond 2025 while swallowing up smaller companies that lacked the budgets to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to grow their brands. In 2022, harsh global macroeconomic conditions hastened their demise.
As we look back on the year, ongoing consolidation across the industry was Sports Handle‘s top business story of 2022. It began in February when TwinSpires, the advance-deposit wagering arm of Churchill Downs, announced it would shut down its sports betting and iGaming division. By June, theScore announced plans to cease U.S. operations in a move to sharpen its focus on the Canadian market. Two other sports betting operations, Fubo Sportsbook and MaximBet, shuttered in the second half of the year.
While leading operators have reined in marketing and promotional spending, the top companies are still shelling out hundreds of millions of dollars in the category. The strong visibility has enabled the three leaders — FanDuel, DraftKings, and BetMGM — to maintain a stranglehold on the market with a combined U.S. share upward of 80%. Rather than bleed cash at a high rate, a number of smaller operators have thrown in the towel."

"What will streaming look like in 2023? Probably a lot more like traditional TV a decade or so ago.
The search for profits will be the overriding theme in the coming year, as a slowdown in subscriber growth and a looming recession are forcing streaming services to cut back on their free-spending ways. And that will have a huge effect on how — and what — consumers will stream in 2023 and beyond.
It’s been a rough year for streaming companies, with all the major players’ stocks down considerably from a year ago — Disney shares DIS are down 44% to date in 2022 and on track for their worst year since 1974, while Netflix NFLX is off more than 50% in 2022 (even with its stock having rebounded more than 50% since July).
Streaming services will focus less on attracting new subscribers and more on retaining the customers they already have, with bundles — Disney+ and Hulu, for example, or Paramount+ and Showtime — and discount subscriptions becoming even more important."

"It feels like 2022 was the year when podcasting came back to earth. After years of go-go growth, podcast hits going mainstream, major corporate investment, and hype about the market to come ($4 billion by 2024!!), optimism about the industry hit the wall of an uncertain economy. M&A took a breather, advertising got tighter, and companies started laying off audio employees after years of frenzied hiring.
What does 2023 have in store? If we have learned anything at all from the decade so far, it is to expect the unexpected. But seeing as I am in as bad a position to predict the future as anyone, I spoke to some experts about what they anticipate for the year to come. The top line: if the economy avoids any big downturns, we will see more of the same for podcasting — slowing, but manageable, growth. If there is a recession, then it could set the industry way back.
The advertising market, to use industry terminology, is soft. It is not awful — there are still plenty of ad dollars flowing to various types of media — but it is not growing as much as it had been. And there is potential for it to get significantly worse in 2023.
This is going to sound really basic, and certainly many of you reading this already know how this works, but advertising is extremely susceptible to economic disruption. And there have been quite a few disruptions in 2022: the war in Ukraine pushing up energy costs; high inflation making everything from vegetables to auto insurance more expensive; and rising interest rates pushing stock prices down. Altogether, these factors make it more expensive to run a business. It also could force consumers to spend less on goods and services, and although that has not really happened yet, it is something that easily could if these economic conditions continue."

The big picture: It will be difficult for any story to top the unprecedented news engagement levels spurred by the COVID pandemic and the final year of the Trump administration, but the drop off seems to be stabilizing, especially on digital platforms.
That could be due in part to a few major 2022 headlines that captured enormous levels of global attention, including the war in Ukraine, the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the FIFA World Cup.
But it's also likely that news engagement is beginning to normalize as consumers return to pre-pandemic news consumption habits.
How it works: Our gauge of news engagement includes cable news viewership, social media interactions with news articles, and monthly unique visitors to top digital news sites.
Details: Data for 2022 shows that while cable news continued to see steep viewership drop-offs, engagement with digital platforms and social media isn't declining as steeply.
Social media interactions with news articles in the U.S. fell 14% last year compared to 2021, compared to a 65% drop between 2020 and 2021, according to data from social intelligence platform NewsWhip.
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Cable news viewership in prime time fell around 14% collectively across the three main cable networks — Fox, CNN and MSNBC — largely due to ratings drop offs in the beginning of the year compared to the beginning of 2021, when the Jan. 6 insurrection captured headlines globally.
Fox News lost just 1% of prime time viewership in total for the year, compared to 32% and 21% at CNN and MSNBC, respectively, per Nielsen ratings.