Sports-focused streaming TV service FuboTV has surpassed 1 million subscribers, the company announced today. The news came as part of FuboTV’s third-quarter financial earnings report: it ended Q3 with 944,605 subscribers but crossed the million figure after the quarter closed.
“FuboTV’s achievement of hitting the 1 million subscriber mark since the third quarter ended is an extraordinary milestone by any measure but particularly remarkable given the momentum of our business over six short years,” said co-founder and CEO David Gandler. FuboTV is also highlighting its growth in revenue, advertising earnings, and viewing hours. The latter reached 284 million hours of streamed content during the quarter, up 113 percent year over year. In his letter to shareholders, Gandler said, “1 million subscribers means increased relevance, leverage and influence with content partners and leagues, and the opportunity to go upstream on tentpole sports properties.”
“To put this in perspective, as of the end of the second quarter 2020, we had approximately 286,000 subscribers,” Gandler added. “And, even at the one million subscriber mark, we believe we are still just scratching the surface of the massive opportunity ahead of us with 72.6 million subscribers still active on traditional pay television.”
Still, that FuboTV is just now hitting the all-important 1 million milestone shows how hard it can be to compete with streaming heavyweights and larger TV-centric services, like YouTube TV, Sling TV, and Hulu with Live TV. Rich Greenfield of LightShed Partners recently estimated that YouTube TV has around 4 million subscribers, making it the largest internet TV provider in the United States, followed closely by Hulu.
FuboTV’s channel bundles start at $64.99 per month, which includes 116 channels, 250 hours of cloud DVR storage, and three concurrent streams. The top-tier Elite package increases that to 162 channels, 1,000 hours of DVR space, and 10 simultaneous streams. That starting price is the same as YouTube TV after the Google-owned service sharply raised its subscription rate in June of last year.
FuboTV also announced that it’s acquiring Molotov SAS, described as “France’s number one live TV streaming company,” and Edisn.ai, an AI company that specializes in video recognition. FuboTV says its tech will be used for “interactive experiences, personalization and platform stability.”