'Meaningful' Bundle Discount Could Boost YouTube TV Subscriber Rate, Says BTIG

If Verizon markets YouTube TV at a “meaningful bundled discount,” it could “accelerate subscriber growth” for the streaming video service, which ended 2018 with about 1 million subscribers and raised monthly fees from $35 to $45 to $50 within the past 12 months, BTIG's Richard Greenfield wrote investors Friday. Verizon said Tuesday it's bringing YouTube TV to customers across platforms this year. Greenfield cited Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg saying the provider wants to focus on the network, platform and integration but not invest in a TV platform or content. He touted Verizon’s distribution, network and brand for being able to attract partnerships like Google’s with YouTube TV. “Time will tell how serious Verizon is about marketing YouTube TV,” said Greenfield, but if it does push hard, pay attention, because its marketing muscle could “make a huge dent” in a 5 million subscriber threshold required for Google to impact the overall broadcast-cable ecosystem. He imagined YouTube TV having enough future clout to win rights to something as high-profile as NFL Sunday Ticket, which AT&T/DirecTV owns through 2022. YouTube TV’s recent price hike “gave us pause,” said the analyst, who believes there’s more to Google’s strategy than being “just another distributor of the bloated legacy bundle.” He believes Google finds a way to scale the service to where it can have leverage. YouTube TV provides “one area of consumer data Google is missing today,” said Greenfield. It also gives Google a route to the access TV ad spending, which Greenfield pegged at $70 billion in the U.S.; the ability to mingle YouTube content with linear TV content; and an opportunity to "replace Nielsen’s antiquated measurement standard.”