(Image credit: Verizon)
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Source: www.nexttv.com, January 2021
Telecom also reports accelerating pay TV losses, with 72,000 customers bolting in Q4
Verizon said that two-thirds of customers who signed up for a free promotional deal for a bundle of Disney Plus, Hulu and ESPN Plus have retained their service, following the end of the one-year promo.
Verizon didn’t disclose how many of those customers kept the entire $12.99 bundle vs. those who downgraded to individual services.
Verizon began offering the bundle free with unlimited 4G LTE and 5G wireless plans during the November 2019 launch of Disney Plus, and it proved one of the key drivers to the new SVOD’s fast subscriber growth.
The wireless company is open to more promotional tie-ups, its CEO told investors this morning.
“We’re not going to have a hundred different type of offerings, but you know Discovery Plus and Disney Plus, they are so-called Super A brands we want to work with. We will look for more of these [as we see subscribers] willing to upgrade and to migrate,” Hans Vestberg said.
Verizon, meanwhile, also reported the loss of 72,000 Fios TV subscribers in the fourth quarter, reducing its pay TV base to below 4 million. The company reported just 51,000 lost pay TV customers in the fourth quarter of 2019.
“On the Fios side, of course, we will continue with the video right now,” Vestberg told investors.
Verizon added 95,000 Fios Internet users, up from 35,000 in the year-ago quarter.
Also, for the very first time, Verizon’s moribund media division experienced revenue growth for the first time since it purchased Yahoo in 2017. The unit, which includes Yahoo, AOL and—up until recently—HuffPost, generated $2.3 billion in the fourth quarter, up 11.4% year over year.
Verizon took a $119 million charge in the fourth quarter related to the sale of Huffpost to BuzzFeed.
