The first thing to know about the streaming wars is that it is really multiple wars simultaneously. One war is between the streamers. They compete fiercely against each other, with Netflix in the lead. (This is by far the most covered battleground.)
If those are the established powers, the upstarts are the free, ad-supported streamers are trying to take territory, er attention/mindspace/viewership, from both. Youtube leads here, but is followed by the hot new crowd of Pluto, Xumi, Tubo, Roku/IMDb Channels, and more.
Yet, those land armies’ power is dwarfed by that of the air forces of the world. Who in many cases set the terms of the streaming wars. And in this analogy, that’s the platforms that deliver the streamers, be they devices or operating systems or other bundlers have just as much, if not more, power. In a moment, a platform could blow up an entire business model, like dropping a nuclear bomb on an opponent’s army.
(The Game of Thrones analogy patented by Dylan Byers also explains this well: streamers are the traditional houses of Westeros, ad-supported streamers are Daenerys and the Dothraki, and the platforms are the White Walkers.)
If you want to understand the scope of Epic Games going to war with Apple, this is it. Epic Game’s army is fighting Apple’s air force, with the expected outcome that Apple nukes Epic’s business.
For those who don’t know, Epic Games (maker of the Fortnite game and Unreal video game engine) tried to implement in-app purchasing outside of Apple’s payments system. This resulted in them being kicked off the Apple app store, lawsuits and countersuits.
The Fortnite gambit will directly impact the streaming wars. The ability of platforms to dictate terms to the streamers directly hits streamers’ top, bottom and cash flow lines. If Fortnite wins, it is like taking away Apple’s (and Google, Roku and Amazon’s) ability to drop bombs. (Okay, I’ve taken this analogy about as far as it will go.) That’s what I’m going to explore today:
- First, explaining the relationship between aggregators, streamers, bundlers and platforms.
- Second, describing the “maximalist” scenario where platforms are heavily regulated.
- Third, understanding the impact across the three forms of streaming business models:
– Transactions (Pay per usage)
– Subscriptions (Pay a recurring fee for access)
– Advertising (Free, but watch/listen to advertisements)
Putting this In Context
As I wrote last November, the key to understanding the streaming wars is to know that a huge amount of power is vested in what I call “Digital Video Bundlers”, the folks bundling multiple streamers into one experience. Here’s where they are on the map, yellow:
Fortnite would slot in where I put “aggregators”, though that term is more apt for streamers than gamers like Fortnite. Apple is the bundler, since they allow a user the opportunity to play multiple games on one device. Crucially, Fortnite—like many app makers—wants to be more. They want to sell additional things within its game to make more money. Epic Games also wants to set up an entire app store on its own. (Really, Epic Games has dreams of being a bundler as well.)
The conflict stems from those in-app purchases. Since Apple owns the operating system, it wants a piece of any money being exchanged on its platform. When you buy an application, you pay Apple 30% of that price. On some level this makes sense. Apple set up the platform so they should get paid for letting you on the platform.
This is a “platform tax” that Apple charges to have an application on its App Store. And Amazon and Google have similar taxes. (You could call it a “fee”, “rent”, or other term, but I like tax.) A tax for doing business on their platform. Apple says this is the price needed to run its App Store.
That’s what makes the terms of this court case so large. If Fortnite wins, they won’t just change their own terms, but alter the fundamental case law around platforms. The results could impact Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Google, Amazon, Roku and any other platform.
The Maximalist Scenario
That’s the world I want to imagine today. I’m calling this the “maximalist” scenario. It assumes a judge/judges/legislative bodies/regulatory agencies use the Fortnite case to legislate/regulate/litigate maximum concessions from an Apple, Amazon or Google on their platforms. Call this the “worst case” for platforms or the “best case” for streamers, applications and games. Say…
– A 3% cap on fees (or cap on fees up to a given maximum).
– Guaranteed carriage on non-business issues
– No tying disparate business unit negotiations together.
Essentially, in this scenario digital market places like app stores are governed as utilities. The government would be saying, “Since you have de facto monopoly power over app stores, we have to regulate your business to ensure you don’t abuse your power.” I’m not assuming this happens, but exploring the “what if” scenario where it does.
Impact on Transactional Business Models
The impacts on the transactional video-on-demand (TVOD) market would probably be the starkest of any of the business models.
Fundamentally, the platform tax makes any external TVOD business unworkable on any mobile device. The math is fairly simple. If you’re Apple, and you own your own TVOD business in iTunes, your gross margins look like this:
Now compare that to an independent service trying to run a TVOD business on iTunes:
