FuboTV secured gaming rights in Arizona, the second state to give regulatory approval to the virtual MVPD’s Fubo Sportsbook via its Fubo Gaming subsidiary, the virtual MVPD said Monday. It received regulatory approval earlier this year to operate as the management service provider to the Ak-Chin Indian Community to go live with mobile betting operations within Arizona, said Fubo, which also has market access agreements in Pennsylvania via Cordish Cos., Indiana and New Jersey via Caesars Entertainment, and Iowa via Casino Queen. The Sportsbook app integrates with fuboTV. Fubo Sportsbook is operational in Iowa and expects to launch in additional markets, subject to regulatory approvals.

Discovery+ is now available on Vizio’s SmartCast streaming platform, said Vizio Thursday. Users can trial the service for seven days before buying; subscriptions are $4.99 monthly with advertisements, $6.99 for commercial-free.

Subscribers to SiriusXM’s $35-monthly Platinum VIP plan can activate 12 months of Apple Music for free under a cross-service promotion, said Sirius Thursday. Apple Music’s catalog has over 90 million songs and 30,000 playlists, available online or off, it said. Under the promo, Platinum VIP subscribers can access spatial audio tracks, time-synced lyrics and artist-hosted shows on the Apple Music 1, Apple Music Country and Apple Music Hits global livestreams, it said. Platinum VIP includes access to SiriusXM in two vehicles and two SXM App logins. Early next year, SiriusXM plans to launch a separate special offer for up to six months of Apple Music free with the purchase of a qualifying SiriusXM subscription plan.

The churn rate for U.S. over-the-top video subscriptions is 44%, said Parks Associates Wednesday, with half of broadband households in Q3 having four-plus OTT video subs. Some 37% of households that subscribed to a new OTT service in the last year plan to quit because of lack of new content, and a quarter of subscribers that canceled a service did so because they finished watching the shows they like. AI and machine learning can identify content that will keep subscribers engaged and behaviors that predict future churn, Parks said.

FuboTV signed an exclusive multiyear deal with The Professional Fighters League for the league’s PFL Challenger Series, the companies said Thursday. Viewers can interact with the live competition through fuboTV's predictive, free-to-play games. Fubo Sportsbook will be the exclusive gambling sponsor of the PFL Challenger Series, they said.

Gracenote announced a content analytics tool Wednesday that’s said to forecast potential future entertainment programming performance. Audience Predict uses Gracenote content metadata, audience measurement data from parent company Nielsen and machine learning to provide content distributors and owners with predictive insights it said will help maximize return on programming investments. With competition for content growing amid the surge in video streaming services, plus linear networks, “decision making around distribution has become increasingly challenging,” Gracenote said. Audience Predict forecasts potential audience size, composition, reach, and viewing minutes under different distribution scenarios by considering program genre and drop patterns for streaming content or air date, air time and lead-in for linear content, the company said. The model will improve iteratively and can be trained to output new program performance metrics based on customer needs, it said.

Roku shares jumped 18.2% Wednesday at $256.08 after the streaming media platform provider and Google avoided a lockout, set for Thursday, of YouTube and YouTube TV on new Roku devices. The companies agreed to a multiyear extension. That's “a positive development for our shared customers, making both YouTube and YouTube TV available for all streamers on the Roku platform,” a Roku spokesperson emailed. Google’s TeamYouTube tweeted: “This means that all Roku users (existing & new) can install the @YouTube and @YouTubeTV apps from the channel store and continue to watch their favorite content.”

ViacomCBS and South Korea's CJ ENM agreed to co-produce original series and films plus license and distribute content across their streaming services. They said Tuesday that ViacomCBS' Paramount+ will enter the Asian market next year by debuting in South Korea in a bundle with TVING, CJ ENM's streaming service. Paramount and CJ ENM/Studio Dragon will co-develop and co-produce English-language scripted series based on CJ ENM/Studio Dragon's titles for exhibition on Paramount+ and co-finance new Korean series for Paramount+ global distribution. Paramount+ will license Korean-language series from CJ EMN's library, they said, and Pluto TV will launch a CJ ENM-branded channel on Dec. 14 of Korean content for U.S. audiences.

Pay-TV and virtual MVPD subscribers can expect a rough 2022 in the form of price increases and carriage disputes, nScreenMedia analyst Colin Dixon blogged Sunday. He said distributors are no longer eating some of the costs of programming license fee hikes but passing it all along to subs. He said programmers increasingly focused on direct-to-consumer offerings will also help accelerate the withering away of the traditional programming bundle.

At least 150 million subscription VOD accounts will be canceled globally next year, said a Deloitte report Wednesday, projecting a 30% industry churn rate. But more subscriptions will be added than dropped, the average number of subscriptions per person will rise, and many subscribers who cancel may re-up, it said. Analysts Chris Arkenberg and Andrew Evans called the trends signs of a “competitive and maturing SVOD market.” Retention will be more important than ever, they said: Churn costs SVOD providers up to $200 per subscriber in acquisition costs, and those could increase as the number of SVOD services grows and the pool of new consumers declines. Four in five U.S. households had a paid SVOD subscription this year, with about 35% churn, said the analysts. While providers are spending “billions of dollars” to shore up their content with top-tier programming, “consumers will only take so many price hikes,” they said, which has led to a rise in less-expensive or free ad-supported offerings.