Kids Shows, Movies and Sports Boost ViacomCBS Streaming Subscribers to 47 Million

ViacomCBS streamer Paramount+ is growing fast, and to give it an even bigger boost, the company is teaming up with T-Mobile to give the streaming service away for free beginning next week. Starting on Nov 9, all of T-Mobile and Sprint’s postpaid wireless and home internet customers, including existing T-Mobile and Sprint customers and existing Paramount+ subscribers, will be able to get 12 months free of Paramount+’s ad-supported tier, which normally costs $4.99 a month, the companies announced this morning. The distribution deal, announced ahead of ViacomCBS’s quarterly earnings, means that about 27 million customers will be eligible for a year of free Paramount+, and ViacomCBS expects the deal will help supercharge Paramount+’s growth ahead of its one-year anniversary. “What we're looking for is an ability to drive scale. We're looking for low subscriber acquisition costs. We're looking for deals which will drive subscriber stickiness, and we want to align with great brands,” ViacomCBS CEO Bob Bakish told investors Thursday morning. “The most important thing for Paramount+ now is exposing more consumers to the offering, particularly as we're ramping content. This deal obviously does that.” How Verizon Became New Streaming Services’ Secret Weapon for Scaling The partnership, only the latest “win-win” distribution deal between streamers and telecom companies will almost surely deliver another injection of growth to ViacomCBS’s burgeoning streaming arm, which has fast become a company priority as the company looks to chart its own course in streaming entertainment. In the most recent quarter, the company added 4.3 million global streaming subscribers driven primarily by growth on Paramount+, and is nearing 47 million total direct-to-consumer subscribers overall, the company reported Thursday morning. (ViacomCBS doesn’t report subscriptions to Paramount+ individually, but instead wraps them up in a single figure that also counts subscribers to Showtime OTT and targeted streamers like BET+.) Combined with free, ad-supported streaming service Pluto TV, which this quarter cleared 54 million monthly active users globally, streaming revenue at the company is steadily climbing. Streaming revenue grew to $1.079 billion in the quarter, up 62% from a year ago, marking the first time that streaming revenue has exceeded $1 billion for the company. “These strong streaming results reinforce our conviction that our strategy is working and that we're well positioned to capture the significant opportunity in the global streaming ecosystem,” Bakish said. The growth was roughly split between streaming subscription revenue, which grew 79% year-over-year to $548 million in the quarter, and streaming advertising, which grew 48% year-over-year to $531 million in the quarter. Within that advertising growth was a particularly strong quarter for Pluto TV, where revenue grew 99% compared to a year ago, the company said. Global streaming subscription ARPU, or average revenue per user, climbed 8% year over year, while ARPU on Pluto TV’s domestic side climbed 60% year-over-year, said ViacomCBS chief financial officer Naveen Chopra. A 'diversity of content' drives Paramount+ sign-ups On a call with investors, Bakish shared additional information about what is performing particularly well on Paramount+ since the service officially rebranded and expanded from CBS All Access in March. Kids and family programming is of particular importance, and more than half of all Paramount+ subscribers stream kids and family content from Nickelodeon brands, Bakish said. The company is leaning in, greenlighting a 2023 sequel to the company’s animated kids movie Paw Patrol and planning a spinoff series of the popular children’s show franchise. Movies were a key driver for new sign-ups and engagement. The horror sequel A Quiet Place Part II and Paw Patrol were the two top-performing titles for acquisition and engagement on the service, Bakish said. Sports were also of particular importance, with one-third of all active domestic Paramount+ subscribers watching sports on the service, Bakish said. New titles and library titles were consumed roughly evenly, highlighting the importance of the Paramount+ library in addition to new buzzy titles. “Our consumer data tells us the diversity of content on Paramount Plus is a huge attraction,” Bakish said. “It has served as a key tool for customer acquisition, as well as for driving customer satisfaction, thus improving churn.” Overlap between Showtime OTT and Paramount+ subscribers is "very, very low," Bakish said, making a bundled offering introduced this fall another avenue for additional customer acquisition and churn reduction. Heading into the fourth quarter, Paramount+ will have a growing line-up of scripted originals, including a new series Mayor of Kingstown from Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan, which the company hopes will continue to move the needle forward. The company is also planning to debut the first of several made-for-streaming South Park films next month. Both Mayor of Kingstown and Yellowstone prequel 1883 will premiere their first episodes on Paramount Network following Yellowstone, an effort aimed at capturing some of Yellowstone’s weekly audience of more than 7 million and enticing them to continue watching on Paramount+. Paramount+ will continue ramping up investment in programming, with plans to spend more than $2 billion in 2021 and growing to an expected $5 billion by 2024. ViacomCBS Rolls Out Discounted Showtime and Paramount+ Streaming Bundle