Comcast and Paramount Eye Streaming Powerhouse: A Deep Dive into Their Joint Venture’s Pros and Cons

Nothing like a good joint venture, they say? Comcast recently pursued one with Spectrum in regards to the Xumo streaming box. It looks like talks are heating up for a possible joint venture for streaming between Comcast and another giant.

Paramount and Comcast are said to have explored a streaming collaboration or joint venture (WSJ Report), specifically focusing on Paramount+ and Peacock, as part of several strategic initiatives Paramount was considering, according to reports. This news emerges in the wake of an announcement earlier this month by Fox Corp, Disney’s ESPN, and Warner Bros Discovery, revealing their plans to debut a new sports streaming platform leveraging their extensive range of professional and college sports broadcasting rights.

Let’s examine the quick benefits and drawbacks of a possible joint venture.

Perks:

More to Watch: Teaming up could mean our app libraries get mashed up into one mega collection, giving everyone a lot movies, TV shows, and unique brands to binge on.

Save That Cash: By sharing the load on making content, marketing, and tech stuff, we could cut down on costs. This might mean cheaper subscriptions for you, but they’re realistically going to have to keep increasing prices (although a bundled option could be cheaper than the sum of its parts…)

Stronger Together: With more subscribers and a bigger library from both sides, we’d be in a better position to negotiate deals. We all saw how Charter-Disney went… It’s easier to negotiate when you have scale.

Hello, World: It’s about making friends in new places without the usual content hassle and cost-appropriate regional prices.

• Paramount Global: Paramount Global’s strategy involves competing in the global streaming market. Paramount+ is available in several countries across different continents, including Canada, Latin America (including Brazil), the Caribbean, the Nordics (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland), Australia, and parts of Europe such as the UK, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria.
• Comcast: Peacock TV is available solely in the US historically. Sky and NOW subscribers located in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria, and Italy now are also able to access it. Because of the constraints imposed by its licensing deals, Peacock employs geo-blocking to prevent streaming by users outside the US.

Challenges:

Jumping Through Hoops: Teaming up could get some shade from the folks who make sure no single company makes all the rules. Red-tape? Maybe… but I think this gets through regulatory concerns.

Who Are We Again?: Merging our stuff might confuse some people. It’s like, “Am I watching Paramount+ or Peacock? And wait… what even is Peacock again? And didn’t it used to be CBS All Access? Is Showtime in this too? Who even knows at this point?” Keeping the brands distinct or finding a way to combine them while sharing the sandbox could get tricky.

Mixing Oil and Water: Getting teams and tech to play nice could be like herding cats… People in the media industry tend to be a bit narcissistic to say the least, so there are a lot of high egos. From potential service hiccups to figuring out how to market and service customers, there’s a risk things could get a bit bumpy. Will the executives be able to make the right call without also compromising their core businesses again? Might be easier for Paramount Global considering the entire company could theoretically be split for parts. Sometimes you only change when you finally hit bottom.

Hands Tied: Hooking up means that Comcast might not be able to chase after some opportunities on their own. But is there any other streaming partner that makes sense right now? Not really.

Not Happy, Jan: If they change things up too much, some fans might not be thrilled. Whether it’s about the service, the price, or not finding their favorite shows as easily, they don’t want anyone having a worse user experience. This will be most risky (from a UI and UX perspective) for consumers that use one or the other, but not both. In addition, how will this be billed? I hate managing multiple log-ins and don’t want to change my billing all the time. Key question is… can they make it easy?

We’ll see what happens. Exciting times in an industry that is going to continue to experience massive disruption.