How Trolls 2 Skipping Theaters Could Change Streaming
When Comcast's (NASDAQ: CMCSA) NBCUniversal announced in April that its majority-owned Fandango service would be acquiring a similar platform called Vudu from Walmart (NYSE: WMT), I categorized it as a last chance for transactional video to prove itself. The transactional video-on-demand (or TVOD) market's growth has been lethargic at best, but Comcast, NBC, and Universal are television and movie powerhouses, respectively. If it can be done well, they can do it.
The jury is still out on the true potential of TVOD, but the business model just bought itself some time. With millions of people trapped at home thanks to the coronavirus contagion last quarter, transactional video did surprisingly well.
It didn't do as well as subscription streaming, mind you. That race is still being led by the likes of Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX), and by a country mile. But, there's a glimmer of hope. The quarter currently underway will serve as the proverbial litmus test for the idea. COVID-19 still has millions of people stuck at home, and in the meantime, a handful of major movie titles have been released in a direct-to-consumer format. More are on the way. Chief among those titles is Universal's controversial Trolls 2, which Universal's chief touted as evidence the film industry doesn't necessarily need movie theaters anymore.
Source Fool.com
