Item 1. Business
Item 1. Business.
Our Mission
Our mission is to build the world’s leading global live TV streaming platform with the greatest breadth of premium content and interactivity.
Overview
We are a sports-first, cable TV replacement product, offering subscribers access to tens of thousands of live sporting events annually, as well as leading news and entertainment content, both live and on demand. Fubo allows customers to access content through streaming devices and on SmartTVs, mobile phones, tablets, and computers.
Live TV streaming has disrupted the traditional pay TV model (linear video received through cable or satellite providers for a paid subscription), which we refer to as “Pay TV.” This disruption has shifted billions of dollars in subscription and advertising revenue to streaming platforms. The rate of Pay TV cord-cutting (termination of a cable or satellite subscription) has continued to accelerate in the United States, while consumers have increasingly favored the streaming experience. As consumers continue to spend more time streaming content, we also believe that advertisers will allocate more dollars away from traditional linear TV advertising spend and towards streaming services. Yet, despite being a growing share of TV consumption, streaming is still in the early stages of adoption. We believe this creates a significant opportunity for us to capitalize on the cord-cutting movement.
We offer subscribers a live TV streaming service with the option to purchase incremental features, including additional content or enhanced functionality (“Attachments”) best suited to their preferences. Our base plan, Fubo Pro, includes a broad mix of channels, including top Nielsen-ranked networks, across sports, news, and entertainment. At the core of our offering is our proprietary technology platform, purpose-built for live TV and sports viewership, and our first-party data. Our proprietary technology stack has enabled us to regularly offer new features and functionality. Unlike other popular Video-on-Demand-only (“VOD”) streaming services, live TV streaming requires sophisticated infrastructure and technology, given the nuances associated with an offering of live programming that refreshes regularly. Today, our proprietary video delivery platform supports all major sports leagues and entertainment content owner delivery requirements. We offer multi-view on Apple TV, which enables subscribers to watch up to four live streams simultaneously, and we offer FanView on multiple devices, which allows subscribers to engage with interactive elements and display game data alongside their chosen content. We leverage our data throughout our organization to make data driven decisions on what content we acquire for our subscribers to influence product design and strategy, to drive subscriber engagement, and to enhance the capabilities and performance of our advertising platform for our advertising partners.
As a result of our direct-to-consumer model, we gain further insight into customer behavior from the billions of data points captured by our platform each month. This data drives our continued innovation and is at the core of our enhanced user experience, product and content strategy, and advertising differentiation. The data also enables us to provide users with real-time personalized discovery of live and on-demand programming and to surface relevant content for our users.
Our growth strategy includes acquiring subscribers who are attracted to our sports offering and can find with us a compelling sports, news, and entertainment viewing alternative to a traditional Pay TV service. We actively engage those subscribers by providing a seamless Pay TV replacement through a personalized easy-to-use streaming product at a lower cost with greater convenience and flexibility than traditional Pay TV providers. We then monetize our audience through subscription fees and our digital advertising offering. In 2021 and 2022, the majority of our revenue was generated from the sale of subscription services and the sale of advertisements in the United States, though the Company has started to expand into international markets, with operations in Canada, Spain and France.
Consistent with our focus on interactivity, we completed the acquisition of Edisn Inc. (“Edisn”), an AI-powered computer vision platform with patent-pending video recognition technologies based in Bangalore, India, in December 2021. With Edisn, we have expanded, and continue to expand, our data science and engineering organization globally, while strengthening our technology capabilities and accelerating innovation.
6
Table of Conte nts
We also acquired Molotov SAS (“Molotov”), a video streaming platform based in Paris, France, in December 2021. With Molotov, we have augmented our technology capabilities, which we believe will enable us to launch our interactive sports and entertainment streaming platform more efficiently on a global scale.
Industry Overview
Streaming services have experienced rapid growth in adoption as consumers engage with streaming video and audio through a variety of devices, including connected TVs, mobile phones, and tablets. Traditional live TV accounts for the majority of TV viewing hours for U.S. households, however, the proportion is declining as customers continue cutting the cord. We believe consumers are increasingly favoring the superior customer experience, lower cost, and better value of streaming services.
Sports and news content have been a key driver for pay TV operators to retain and grow audiences. Historically, most streaming subscription services primarily focused on entertainment content offerings, requiring sports fans to, until recently, remain tethered to the Pay TV ecosystem. This positions our offering well to provide a Pay TV replacement service via streaming that also features an enhanced live sports and news viewing experience.
Our Business Model
Our business motto is “come for the sports, stay for the entertainment.” This consists of leveraging sporting events to acquire subscribers at lower acquisition costs, given the built-in demand for sports. We then leverage our technology and data to drive higher engagement and induce retentive behaviors such as favoriting channels, recording shows, and increasing discovery through our proprietary machine learning recommendations engine. Next, we look to monetize our growing base of highly engaged subscribers by driving higher average revenue per user (“ARPU”).
We drive our business model with three core strategies:
• Grow our paid subscriber base
• Optimize our content portfolio, engagement and retention
• Increase monetization through subscription and advertising
Our Offerings
Our offerings address the needs of the parties in the TV streaming ecosystem.
Subscribers
We offer consumers a live TV streaming platform for sports, news, and entertainment. We provide multiple plans with the flexibility for consumers to purchase the Attachments best suited for them. Our base plan, Fubo Pro, includes over 100+ channels, including many of the top Nielsen-rated networks, dozens of channels with sports, double digit news channels, and some popular entertainment channels. Subscribers have the option to add premium channels and additional channel packages, as well as upgrade other Attachments such as more DVR storage with Cloud DVR Plus and additional simultaneous streams with Family Share.
Advertisers
As cord cutting continues and traditional Pay TV viewers decline, advertisers are increasingly allocating their ad budgets to Over-the-Top (“OTT”) platforms to reach these audiences. Fubo’s sports-first live TV platform offers advertisers a growing and increasingly valuable live audience and provides un-skippable ad inventory on high quality content. Advertisers also benefit from combining traditional TV advertising formats with the advantages of digital advertising including measurability, relevancy, and interactivity.
7
Table of Conte nts
Content Providers
Our TV streaming platform creates the opportunity for content providers to monetize and distribute their content to our highly engaged audience. In doing so, content providers are expanding their audiences, which have shrunk on traditional Pay TV because of ongoing cord-cutting. By aggregating a broad variety of content to deliver a comprehensive offering on our platform, we believe Fubo is able to provide greater engagement and value to subscribers than content providers would otherwise be able to deliver independently. Furthermore, our data-driven platform enables us to capture valuable insights on consumer behavior and preferences, which are increasingly valuable to our content providers.
Seasonality
We generate significantly higher levels of revenue and subscriber additions in the third and fourth quarters of the year. This seasonality is driven primarily by sports leagues, especially the National Football League. Our operating results may also be affected by the scheduling of major sporting events that do not occur annually, such as the World Cup or Olympic Games, or the cancellation or postponement of sporting events. In addition, we typically see the total number of subscribers on our platform decline from the fourth quarter of the previous year through the first and second quarter of the following year.
Our Growth Strategies
We believe that we are at the early stages of our growth and that we are at an inflection point in the TV industry where streaming has begun to surpass traditional linear Pay TV in several key areas, including content choice, ease of access and use across devices, and cost savings to consumers. We remain committed to our goal of driving sustainable and profitable growth, and we believe we are well-positioned to do this by executing on the following strategies:
• Continue to efficiently grow our subscriber base : As of December 31, 2022, Fubo had approximately 1.445 million paid subscribers in the United States and Canada (“North America” or “NA”) and approximately 420,000 paid subscribers in Spain and France (“Rest of World” or “ROW”), up from approximately 1.122 million in NA and approximately 193,000 in ROW as of December 31, 2021. We utilize a broad range of subscriber acquisition channels and tactics designed to optimize marketing spend and efficiently acquire and retain subscribers. Our Sales and Marketing expenses relative to total revenues was approximately 18.2% in during the year ended December 31, 2022. We will continue to utilize and analyze the data we have collected to help us become more efficient with our marketing campaigns relative to spend.
• Enactment of ARPU expansion efforts : Our NA ARPU was $72.74 and $70.50 for the year ended December 31, 2022 and 2021, respectively. Our ROW ARPU was $6.14 for the year ended December 31, 2022. We drive ARPU expansion through price-increases, attachment sales, and advertising revenue growth. By pricing against content portfolio adjustments, we aim to deliver value through our offerings. Attachments, including channel package add-ons and interactive features, increase our margins by piggybacking on to our base offerings and not meaningfully increasing our cost basis while increasing revenues.
• Further investment in advertising sales team, technology and infrastructure: For the year ended December 31, 2022, Fubo’s advertising revenue was approximately $101.7 million, up from approximately $73.7 million in December 31, 2021. Improvements to our content portfolio, user interface, navigational elements, content merchandising and targeting capabilities, combined with evolutions in customer behavior and growth in our subscriber base, have driven growth of our viewership over time. We are increasingly monetizing this engagement through advertising on the Fubo platform. We intend to continue leveraging our data and analytics to deliver relevant advertising while improving the ability of our advertisers to optimize and measure the results of their campaigns. We have also expanded our direct sales teams to increase the number of advertisers who leverage our platform and continue improving our fill-rates and Cost Per Thousands (“CPMs”).
• Continue to enhance our content portfolio with cost vigilance : Because we have the direct-to-consumer relationship with the ability to analyze all the content that our subscribers consume, we believe we can continue to drive better subscriber experiences. We plan to continue to optimize our content mix to best suit our subscribers’ interests by leveraging our deep understanding of our subscribers through the data captured on the platform, with the goal of expanding unit economics by balancing the aggregation of the best sports and entertainment programming with vigilance around content costs.
8
Table of Conte nts
• Continue to invest in our technology and data capabilities: We believe that our technology platform, coupled with our content offering, differentiates us. We continue to invest and build a scalable, highly automated technology infrastructure, that’s purpose-built to give us a structural advantage to help drive subscriber acquisition, content strategy and product decisions. We are focused on adding interactive features that turn passive viewers into active participants. Additionally, in 2022 we initiated the integration of the Fubo and Molotov platforms together into a Unified Platform, with the goal of launching in the United States in 2023. We anticipate this initiative will drive significant cost savings over the coming years as well as increase product development velocity and innovation.
• Expand Internationally: Outside of the United States, we currently operate in Canada, Spain and, through our acquisition of Molotov in 2021, France. We believe there remains a significant opportunity to expand internationally.
Intellectual Property
Our intellectual property is an essential element of our business. We rely on a combination of patent, trademark, copyright and other intellectual property laws, confidentiality agreements and license agreements to protect our intellectual property rights. We also license certain third-party technology for use in conjunction with our products.
We believe that our continued success depends on hiring and retaining highly capable and innovative employees, especially as it relates to our engineering base. It is our policy that our employees and independent contractors involved in development are required to sign agreements acknowledging that all inventions, trade secrets, works of authorship, developments and other processes generated by them on our behalf are our property and assigning to us any ownership that they may claim in those works. Despite our precautions, it may be possible for third parties to obtain and use without consent intellectual property that we own or license. Unauthorized use of our intellectual property by third parties, and the expenses incurred in protecting our intellectual property rights, may adversely affect our business.
Patents and Patent Applications
As of December 31, 2022, we had four issued U.S. patents, one non-provisional U.S. patent application, one U.S. design patent application, 18 granted international design registrations in three international design patents, three granted international patents, and 19 international patent applications pending. The issued and granted patents expire in 2033 and 2038, the pending patent applications, if granted, will expire in 2038 and 2041, and the international design registrations have expiration dates ranging from 2035 to 2045. Although we actively attempt to utilize patents to protect our technologies, we believe that none of our patents, individually or in the aggregate, are material to our business. We will continue to file and prosecute patent applications when appropriate to attempt to protect our rights in our proprietary technologies. However, there can be no assurance that our patent applications will be approved, that any patents issued will adequately protect our intellectual property, or that such patents will not be challenged by third parties or found by a judicial authority to be invalid or unenforceable.
Trademarks
We also rely on several registered and unregistered trademarks to protect our brand. As of December 31, 2022, we had 37 trademarks registered globally. “fuboTV” is a registered trademark in the United States and the European Union.
9
Table of Conte nts
Competition
The TV streaming market continues to grow and evolve as more viewers shift from traditional Pay TV to streaming. There is significant competition in the TV market for users, advertisers, and broadcasters. We principally compete with Pay TV operators, such as Comcast, Cox and Altice, along with other virtual multichannel video programming distributors (“vMVPDs”), such as YouTube TV, Hulu Live and Sling TV. While the presence of these competitors in the market has helped to boost consumer awareness of TV streaming, contributing to the growth of the overall market, their resources and brand recognition present substantial competitive challenges.
We compete on various factors to acquire and retain users. These factors include quality and breadth of content offerings, especially within live sports; features of our TV streaming platform, including ease of use and superior user experience; brand awareness in the market; and perceived value relative to the price of our service. Additionally, we compete for user engagement. Many users have multiple subscriptions to various streaming services and allocate time and money between them.
We also face competition for advertisers, which in part depends on our ability to acquire and retain users. Providing a large and engaged audience is crucial for advertisers on our live TV streaming platform. In the TV streaming market, the effectiveness of advertisements and return on investments play a pivotal role. As such, we are also competing for advertisers based on the return of ads compared to various other digital advertising platforms, including mobile and web. Additionally, advertisers continue to allocate a large portion of spend to advertise offline. Therefore, we also compete with traditional media platforms such as traditional linear TV and radio. We are increasingly leveraging our data and analytics capabilities to optimize advertisements for both users and advertisers. We need to continue to maintain an appropriate advertising inventory for the growing demand for ads on our platform.
Furthermore, we compete to attract and retain broadcasters. Our ability to license content from broadcasters is dependent on the scale of our user base as well as license terms.
Our People and Human Capital Management
Who We Are
We are a diverse group of individuals, creatives, technologists, analysts and more. Some of us love sports, some binge the news, others prefer rom-coms. But we are united by a common mission — building the world’s leading global live TV streaming platform with the greatest breadth of premium content and interactivity.
As of December 31, 2022, we had approximately 510 employees globally, of which approximately 360 were located in North America and approximately 150 were located in Europe and India. Additionally, we rely on independent contractors and temporary personnel to supplement our workforce from time to time. We have not experienced any work stoppages, and we consider our relationship with our employees to be good. None of our U.S. or Indian employees is represented by a labor union or covered by a collective bargaining agreement. Our French employees are covered by the national collective bargaining agreement for the consulting and engineering activities in France.
Our Values and Talent Development
We view our employees as central to the success of our business and achieving our mission. We onboard new employees with training programs on our values, certain aspects of our business, and important policies, including our Code of Business Conduct. We also value ongoing development and continuous learning, and strive to support and provide enriching opportunities to our employees. Throughout the year we monitor employee engagement and provide periodic training and informational sessions on our business and policies, including security awareness, through a variety of forums, including all-hands meetings, “ask me anything” sessions, and company-wide newsletters. Management uses input collected during these sessions to ensure ongoing awareness of employees’ needs and improve activities aimed to serve our customers. Collectively through these initiatives we aim to keep our employees well-informed and to increase transparency.
10
Table of Conte nts
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
We prioritize building a diverse, inclusive, equitable, and empowered team representing a mix of gender, racial and ethnic backgrounds, industries, and levels of experience. We believe the different backgrounds, traditions, views and talents each of our employees brings to Fubo enrich the company as a whole and will help us achieve executional excellence. In 2020, we formed a Diversity, Engagement and Belonging Council, comprised of different team members throughout various levels of the organization, who recommend and help organize diversity and inclusion initiatives within the company. We are committed to creating and maintaining a workplace free from discrimination or harassment on the basis of race, religion, religious creed, color, ethnic or national origin, ancestry, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, military service or veteran status, disability, medical condition, or any other status protected by applicable law. Our policies and compliance trainings prohibit such discrimination and harassment, and all our employees are expected to exhibit and promote honest, ethical, and respectful conduct in the workplace.
Compensation and Benefits
Our compensation programs and benefits packages are designed to attract, retain and motivate exceptional talent who possess the skills necessary to drive our business objectives, assist in the achievement of our strategic goals and create long-term value for our shareholders. We offer employees compensation packages designed to be competitive that include base salary, and, depending on the role, business function and geographic market, cash bonuses, commissions, long-term incentive equity, and performance-based equity. We are proud that we have granted equity to the majority of our employees across all levels of the organization as part of their total compensation package. We believe this fosters a stronger sense of ownership and further aligns our employees’ interests with the interest of our shareholders. In addition to our compensation programs, we offer a variety of benefits to our employees, which can include 401(k) plan with matching, health (medical, dental and vision) insurance, life insurance, paid time off, paid parental leave, a referral bonus program and company-sponsored short term and long term disability. We believe that a competitive compensation and benefits program with both short-term and long-term award opportunities, including awards tied to the achievement of meaningful performance metrics, allows us to align employees with shareholder interests.
Health and Safety
We are committed to the health and safety of our employees, and continue to adapt to ever-changing workplace and workforce dynamics. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we took a number of precautionary measures to protect the health and safety of our employees, including by initially transitioning our workforce to remote working as we temporarily closed our offices beginning in March 2020. Our offices have subsequently reopened and the majority of our employees have returned to office on a hybrid schedule; however some of our employees continue to work remotely, and, in the long term, we expect some personnel to continue to do so on a regular basis. We are focused on building capabilities to support a variety of work styles where individuals, teams, and our business can be successful. We have invested in programs that help support our employees’ day-to-day wellness needs and goals including access to professional counselors, health coaching and advocacy services. We also maintain a whistleblower hotline through which employees can report health and safety risks.
Merger with fuboTV Sub
On April 1, 2020, fuboTV Acquisition Corp., a Delaware corporation and our wholly-owned subsidiary (“Merger Sub”) merged with and into fuboTV Sub, whereby fuboTV Sub continued as the surviving corporation and became our wholly-owned subsidiary pursuant to the terms of the Agreement and Plan of Merger and Reorganization dated as of March 19, 2020, by and among us, Merger Sub and fuboTV Sub (the “Merger Agreement”). Following the Merger, we changed our name from “FaceBank Group, Inc.” to “fuboTV Inc.,” and we changed the name of fuboTV Sub to “fuboTV Media, Inc.” The combined company operates under the name “Fubo,” and our trading symbol is “FUBO.” See “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations—Merger with fuboTV Sub” in Part II, Item 7 in this Annual Report for a further description of the Merger.
11
Table of Conte nts
Government Regulation
Our business and our devices and platform are subject to numerous domestic and foreign laws and regulations covering a wide variety of subject matters. These include general business regulations and laws, as well as regulations and laws specific to providers of Internet-delivered streaming services and Internet-connected devices. New or modified laws and regulations in these areas may have an adverse effect on our business. The costs of compliance with these laws and regulations are high and are likely to increase in the future. We anticipate that several jurisdictions may, over time, impose greater financial and regulatory obligations on us. If we fail to comply with these laws and regulations, we may be subject to significant liabilities and other penalties. Additionally, compliance with these laws and regulations could, individually or in the aggregate, increase our cost of doing business, impact our competitive position relative to our peers, and otherwise have an adverse impact on our operating results. For additional information about the impact of government regulations on our business, see “Risk Factors— Risks Related to Regulation” and “Risk Factors—Risks Related to Privacy, Consumer Protection and Cybersecurity” in Part I, Item 1A in this Annual Report.
Data Protection and Privacy
We are subject to various laws and regulations covering the privacy and protection of users’ data. Because we handle, collect, store, receive, transmit, transfer, and otherwise process certain information, which may include personal information, regarding our users and employees in the ordinary course of business, we are subject to federal, state and foreign laws related to the privacy and protection of such data. These laws and regulations, and their application to our business, are increasingly shifting and expanding. Compliance with these laws and regulations, such as the California Consumer Privacy Act ("CCPA"), as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act ("CPRA"), and the European Union General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679 (the “GDPR”) could affect our business, and their potential impact is unknown. Any actual or perceived failure to comply with these laws and regulations may result in investigations, claims and proceedings, regulatory fines or penalties, damages for breach of contract, or orders that require us to change our business practices, including the way we process data.
We are also subject to breach notification laws, including the GDPR, in the jurisdictions in which we operate, and we may be subject to litigation and regulatory enforcement actions as a result of any data breach or other unauthorized access to or acquisition or loss of personal information. Any significant change to applicable laws, regulations, interpretations of laws or regulations, or market practices, regarding the processing of personal data, or regarding the manner in which we seek to comply with applicable laws and regulations, could require us to make modifications to our products, services, policies, procedures, notices, and business practices, including potentially material changes. Such changes could potentially have an adverse impact on our business. For additional information about the impact of data protection and privacy regulations on our business, see “Risk Factors—Risks Related to Privacy, Consumer Protection and Cybersecurity” in Part I, Item 1A in this Annual Report.
Corporate Information
We were incorporated in 2009 as a Florida corporation under the name York Entertainment, Inc., and on August 10, 2020, our name was changed to fuboTV Inc. fuboTV Sub was incorporated in 2014 as a Delaware corporation. Our principal executive offices are located at 1290 Avenue of the Americas, 9th Floor, New York, New York 10104, and our telephone number is (212) 672-0055. Our website address is at https://fubo.tv . Information contained on, or that can be accessed through, our website is not incorporated by reference into this Annual Report, and you should not consider information on our website to be part of this Annual Report.
12
Table of Conte nts
Available Information
Our internet website address is www.fubo.tv. At our Investor Relations website, ir.fubo.tv, we make available free of charge a variety of information for investors, including our annual report, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K and any amendments to those reports, as soon as reasonably practicable after we electronically file that material with or furnish it to the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”). The information found on our website is not part of this or any other report we file with, or furnish to, the SEC.
We announce material information to the public through filings with the SEC, the investor relations page on our website, press releases, our Twitter account (@fuboTV), our Instagram account (@fubotv), our Facebook page (www.facebook.com/fuboTV), our LinkedIn page (www.linkedin.com/company/fubotv/), public conference calls, and webcasts in order to achieve broad, non-exclusionary distribution of information to the public and for complying with our disclosure obligations under Regulation FD. We encourage investors, the media, and others to follow the channels listed above and to review the information disclosed through such channels. Any updates to the list of disclosure channels through which we will announce information will be posted on the investor relations page on our website.
13
Table of Conte nts