Latest news with #non-Disney
Yahoo
02-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Fubo Shares Plunge on Weak Ad Revenue as Hulu Plans Proceed
Shares of sports-centric streaming platform Fubo dropped 17% in early trading Friday after the company announced quarterly results that drew concern over ad revenue and worldwide growth despite the business beating expectations for the period. Fubo (FUBO) posted revenue of $416.29 million and a net loss per share of two cents in the first quarter, ended March 31, both slightly bettering the consensus of seven brokerage analysts following the company, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence. North American subscribers slipped to nearly 3% to equal 1.47 million at quarter's end, a level Fubo said was better than they expected. Fubo customers can add or drop the service without a contract, making subscriber levels typically volatile with the end of various sports seasons. More from YouTube Teases New Features for 20th Anniversary as NFL Ties Grow YouTube Is Wildly Rich and Popular. That's Bad News for Sports TV. YouTube TV's March Madness Has Its Own Selection Committee 'We are pleased with these results, which came against a typically lighter first quarter sports calendar and a broader backdrop of economic uncertainty,' CEO David Gandler said in prepared remarks on a conference call Friday morning. The executive also said they aim to launch a combined skinny streaming bundle in combination with Hulu, featuring sports and broadcast channels from Disney and other providers in time for the autumn sports season. Still, traders were displeased with results, sending Fubo down as much as 50 cents a share to $2.43 in early trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Based on analysts' questions during the morning conference call, concerns seem to revolve around an 11% drop in subscriber levels outside the U.S. over the past six months, a 17% drop in ad-related revenue and the continued absence of some Spanish language content, the latter two driven by Warner Bros. Discovery and Televisa Univision networks leaving the platform. Fubo lost ad capacity it can sell into channels it carries with the disappearance of both from the platform, and the decline in Spanish content has led to higher subscriber churn. 'Our goal has always been profitability, profitability over growth,' Gandler said in response to a question over global business. 'International is an important piece to the long-term trajectory of this business … and we're getting everything ready to expand at the right moment at the right time.' On the Spanish-language front, Televisa Univision had indicated on its own earnings call that it was seeking discussions with Fubo about returning to the platform, but Fubo executives said there were no updates to be given, emphasizing they would only carry networks at acceptable terms. 'We're very focused on completing our content deals with non-Disney partners. But of course, we've made it very clear that it has to be on acceptable terms at a fair market price with the same flexibility as other distributors,' Gandler said. Fubo's outlook for the current period likely heaped on concerns as well. The company said it sees a 14% decline year over year on North American subscribers and a 10% decline of worldwide revenue to around $345 million, even while saying it's not seeing much impact from recent economic worries. The company said in the longer term, it expects technological advances, such as gamified and interactive ads, as well as the combination with Hulu, to drive profitability and scale in the business. Best of Most Expensive Sports Memorabilia and Collectibles in History The 100 Most Valuable Sports Teams in the World NFL Private Equity Ownership Rules: PE Can Now Own Stakes in Teams Sign in to access your portfolio
The Guardian
10-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Babe review – tale of the talking sheep-pig a charming relic of its time
Thirty years ago, a non-Disney talking-animal adventure became a big movie talking point. Babe, adapted from Dick King-Smith's children's book The Sheep-Pig, features an adorable piglet who is rescued from a brutally realistic-looking agribusiness breeding shed as his mum and siblings are taken off to be slaughtered; it is then rehomed in a quaintly old-fashioned farm with lots of different animals, situated in an uncanny-valley landscape of rolling green hills which looks like Olde England but where everyone speaks in an American accent. The lead human is grumpy cap-wearing Farmer Hoggett, played by James Cromwell, later to be hard-faced Captain Dudley Smith in LA Confidential and Prince Philip in Stephen Frears' film The Queen. The little piglet does his best to fit in and finds his destiny when it looks as if he could be a very talented sheep-herder. But this is not animation, nor is it precisely live-action. The movie got a (justified) best visual effects Oscar for its mix of animatronics and real animals, modifying their appearance and behaviour onscreen and using CGI for their mouths. It was a startling novelty which was very much of its time. Yet Babe and its innovations didn't really lead to anything else; they were almost a standalone phenomenon, soon superseded in mainstream family-movie terms by the digital animation of Pixar and Disney's continuing live-action productions. Babe is a strange film, for me. The digitally confected moving mouths superimposed on the faces of largely real animals do not convey emotions and moods in the way even a crude animation might; the rest of the animal's face remains inscrutable and unreadable, and the animals have neither the charm of unadorned reality nor the thoroughgoing ingenuity of animation. And the story itself is a kind of weird anti-Orwell farmyard tale in which the slaughter of animals is a reality central to Babe's identity crisis, but which is otherwise not part of the film's world; nor is there much zip to the script. But, shot by the late Andrew Lesnie, cinematographer on the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings films, it always looks good. Babe is in UK cinemas from 11 April.
