It’s no secret that the current streaming market is looking for new ways to innovate and attract customer eyes. However, the latest development from Paramount+ is a rather unusual one, for sure. Brandon Blake, entertainment attorney for Blake & Wang P.A, has all the details.
Walmart+ and Paramount+
Paramount+ will now be an added offering for those with subscriptions to Walmart+, the chain’s subscription service. Currently priced at $98 per annum, most of the Walmart+ package centers on free deliveries and other shopping-related perks, as you’d expect. Now they will be able to access the entire Paramount+ streaming service at its ad-supported tier, which discounts live news coverage from CBS but puts their entire entertainment repertoire at subscriber’s disposal. Interestingly, this will not be retro-fitted the other way for existing Paramount+ subscribers, either, which may go down poorly.
Boosting Growth
It’s easy to assume that Walmart, which has embraced the new partnership with much gusto, is hoping to reinvent its existing subscription service to fall more in-line with the Amazon Prime Video offerings. For Paramount, we can assume the lure is additional subscriber figures. Coupled with a reasonably strong subscriber performance for quarter 2 this year, an underlying boost to their subs from a large entity with an existing subscriber base could be enough to push its numbers up to be seriously competitive with larger entities like Netflix and Disney.
So, while it’s easy to see where the corporate mood behind the partnership is coming from, one question remains- is this just number-pushing, or will the addition of the Walmart+ family to the Paramount+ subscriber base prove to have tangible value for their bottom line? It’s too early to say, but it will be an interesting expansion on the Amazon content-subscription model, and it will be fascinating to see what results.
