However, analysts expressed some skepticism that the addition of ESPN would be enough to raise the profile of FuboTV, which said it had 316,000 customers at the end of 2019. That represents about 3 percent of the roughly 9.5 million Americans who currently subscribe to virtual multichannel video programming distributor services, per estimates from MoffettNathanson.
Michael Greeson, president and director of research at TDG Research, said in an email that the company “won’t be able to survive for years in a sea of cutthroat, deep-pocketed competitors” in a fairly small virtual MVPD market of around 10 million customers.
But Gandler said in a follow-up email that rather than trying to compete for existing virtual MVPD customers, he sees a path to growth in siphoning off some of the more than 70 million American households that still subscribe to traditional pay-TV.
“We're looking at this as a 5-to-7-year project, and we think that we'll be able to grow our sub base significantly over that period of time without having to create a lot of risks for the business,” he said.
Gandler said FuboTV had been in “ongoing discussions for years” with Disney and is finally at the point where such a substantial investment makes sense. The deal comes months after a merger with FaceBank Group earlier this year that gave the streaming service access to a secured revolving line of credit totaling $100 million, according to an SEC filing. Prior to that deal, FuboTV had raised just over $150 million in investment capital, according to CrunchBase.
Even with the merger and plans to list on the Nasdaq and a subsequent public offering, Rich Greenfield, a partner at media research firm Lightshed Partners, questioned whether FuboTV has “the marketing dollars to go out and build this into a multimillion subscriber company.”
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