Streaming service fuboTV to merge with virtual entertainment technology company, FaceBank

Published March 23, 2020

Over-the-top live TV streaming service fuboTV announced today it plans to merge with the virtual entertainment technology company, FaceBank Group. The proposed merger would retain the name fuboTV for the combined company, consisting of fuboTV’s direct-to-consumer live TV streaming platform and FaceBank’s technology IP in sports, movies and live performances.

FaceBank is not a household name, but is a developer of hyper-realistic digital humans — including those of celebrities and consumers — for use in emerging technologies, like VR and AR, as well as in live entertainment, interactive, media, social networking and AI-driven applications.

You may remember the company from its creation of the hologram of Michael Jackson at The Billboard Music Awards in 2014, when it was then called Pulse Evolution. It also created a virtual Tupac in 2012, and owns the rights to develop digital representations of Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe and others. The company has also worked to create virtual creatures and characters in movies like “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers,” “Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith,” “Transformers,” “Benjamin Button” and more, per its website.

According to the proposed merger agreement, the plan is to create a leading digital entertainment company that combines fuboTV with FaceBank’s IP in order to create a content delivery platform for both traditional and “future-form IP.”

That is to say, you’ll be able to stream your live TV and these virtual/digital human performances on one platform, it seems.

FuboTV also says it plans to leverage FaceBank’s IP sharing relationships with leading celebrities and other digital technologies to enhance its sports and entertainment offerings.

“The business combination of FaceBank Group and fuboTV accelerates our ability to build a category-defining company and supports our goal to provide consumers with a technology-driven cable TV replacement service for the whole family,” said fuboTV CEO David Gandler, in a statement. “With our growing businesses in the U.S., and recent beta launches in Canada and Europe, fuboTV is well-positioned to achieve its goal of becoming a world-leading live TV streaming platform for premium sports, news and entertainment content. In the current COVID-19 environment, stay-at-home stocks make perfect sense – we plan to accelerate our timing to uplist to a major exchange as soon as practicable. We look forward to working with John and his team of creative visionaries,” he added.

“As a tech-driven IP company, FaceBank was looking to find the perfect delivery platform for its celebrity and consumer-driven content, with a dynamic user interface that could support the global consumers’ rapidly evolving practices of content consumption,” added FaceBank founders John Textor and Alex Bafer. “David and his team have a clear vision of the future and fuboTV’s technology is second to none among the disruptor class of content delivery – a perfect match for FaceBank Group,” their statement read.

FaceBank is buying FuboTV — or merging, as the legal wording appears to indicate — for preferred stock, the SEC filing reveals. The new shares, dubbed “Series AA Convertible Preferred Stock,” will have 0.8 votes per share, and convert to two shares of common stock. The acquiring entity changed its articles of incorporation to get rid of all prior forms of preferred shares in favor of the new, Series AA shares. It isn’t clear yet how many shares FuboTV shareholders will receive in the deal, but as the total number of Series AA shares created was 35.8 million, we can note that there is a cap.

FaceBank also says it took out a secured revolving line of credit of $100 million, the first $10 million of which will be provided to fuboTV on April 1 or the closing date of the merger, whichever is later.

The merger will allow fuboTV to continue its international expansion, by way of FaceBank Group’s Nexway — an e-commerce and payment platform live in 180 countries, the company says.

FuboTV was founded in 2015, first as a soccer streaming service, then later expanded into more sports and entertainment. It competes with YouTube TV, Hulu with Live TV, AT&T TV Now and, before its shutdown, PlayStation Vue.

The deal follows several other consolidations in online streaming and media, including Disney’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox, Viacom’s purchase of pluto.tv and Fox Corp.’s acquisition of Tubi. For smaller streamers, it’s difficult to keep up with the rising costs of programming amid competition from larger competitors, like Disney (Hulu’s majority owner) and Google (which runs YouTube TV).

The boards of directors of both companies and the major stockholders of fuboTV have approved the transaction, which is anticipated to close during the first quarter of 2020, subject to the satisfaction of certain closing conditions, the companies said.

Streaming sports service fuboTV raises $75 million from AMC and others

Published April 18, 2018

Days after Disney-owned ESPN launched its new streaming service, ESPN+, a three-year old streaming TV service for sports fans, fuboTV, is announcing the close of $75 million in Series D funding. The round included new investor AMC Networks, and existing investors 21st Century Fox, Luminari Capital, Northzone, Sky, and the former Scripps Networks Interactive, which was recently acquired by Discovery, Inc.

FuboTV has been working to carve out a niche for itself in the streaming TV market, where a number of competitors are delivering television programming to cord cutters by way of the internet.

In terms of subscribers, that space today is led by Dish’s Sling TV and AT&T’s newer DirecTV Now. But the market has also seen a lot of newcomers over the past year or so, with launches from Hulu’s Live TV, YouTube TV, and Philo. PlayStation Vue is a competitor as well, while CBS runs its own over-the-top streaming TV service with just its content, CBS All Access.

While many streaming TV services offer some sports content in their base packages, or sell additional access through add-ons, fuboTV’s core focus has been on serving the sports fan.

The service provides access to live games from the NBA, NHL, UFC, and more soccer than other streaming providers –
including matches from Bundesliga, EPL and La Liga to Liga MX, MLS, FIFA World Cup qualifiers, UEFA
Champions League matches and more.

That access doesn’t come cheap, however. FuboTV’s basic package with 70-plus channels, Fubo Premier, is $19.99 for the first month, which then becomes $44.99 per month after.

Customers can then customize their package with other options, like a “Sports Plus,” “Adventure Plus,” or “International Sports Plus” upgrade; a DVR with 500 hours of storage instead of just 30; or the option to add a third stream.

Even though the entry-level package is more than a full subscription to a mainstream service like Sling TV or YouTube TV, fuboTV managed to reach over 100,000 paid subscribers as of September 2017, and is continuing to see double-digit growth, it says.

Since the last funding round ten months ago, the company has streamed its first MLB All Star Game, Playoffs and World Series; Tour de France; NFL regular season, playoffs and Super Bowl; college football; and the Winter Olympic Games. And it has exited beta on Apple TV, Chromecast, Roku, iOS and Android; revamped its user interface; and debuted new features like “Lookback” and “Startover.”

The lineup it offers has begun to broaden beyond sports in recent months, as well.

While it has added several new sports additions in the last ten months, it has added entertainment networks, too – including those from its strategic investors. These include AMC, BBC AMERICA, CBS, CBS Sports Network, CBSN, Food Network, FUSION TV, HGTV, IFC, MSG, MSG+, NESN, NFL Network, Pac-12 Network, Pop, SNY, SundanceTV, The Olympic Channel, Travel Channel and WE tv.

Combined, fuboTV offers viewers over 30,000 sporting events per year, 10,000+ titles in its video-on-demand library.

In addition, fuboTV has been adding broadcast affiliates and now offers Fox in 87 percent of U.S. households, and NBC and CBS in 72 percent and 68 percent, respectively. In total, it has 257 local broadcast affiliates and owned-and-operated stations on the service.

FuboTV doesn’t just generate revenue from subscriptions, however – it also sells advertising.

The company tells TechCrunch it’s forecasting a revenue run rate of over $100 million by this time next year.

“We are very bullish from an ad perspective, even though we only launched server-side ad insertion in January,” notes fuboTV co-founder and CEO David Gandler. “One quarter in, advertising represents low single-digit percentage of our overall revenue, but it is growing quickly. As a benchmark, we are already experiencing ad revenue per subscriber above Spotify’s recently published ad revenue per user data,” he says.

With the new investment, fuboTV plans to double its office space and engineers and product team, and open a second headquarters. The funding will also be used to develop new products and content offerings, and for marketing.

Correction, 4/18/18, 4 PM ET: AMC participated and is a new investor; AMC did not lead the round. The article has been updated to reflect.