While we have seen much jockeying for limited subscriber market share in the wider streaming space, Roku has continued to slowly build on its FAST TV presence, boosted mainly by its range of Smart TV and set-top box options. It seems there could finally be a direct challenger for its market niche, however, as a newly announced deal from Walmart positions them to sell their own in-house Smart TV range. Brandon Blake, one of the best entertainment lawyers at Blake & Wang P.A., has the news for us.
Walmart Acquires Vizio
Last week it was announced that Walmart will take ownership of Smart-TV maker, Vizio, in a $2.3B deal that could have massive ramifications for the wider streaming advertising space. Vizio currently rivals Samsung for overall market share in North America. While the hardware business no doubt has an appeal of its own, what is most likely to have caught their attention is Vizio’s SmartCast Operating System, which currently boasts over 18M active accounts to tempt advertisers.
Not Walmart’s First Rodeo
This won’t be the first time we’ve seen Walmart attempt to acquire itself a slice of the streaming pie. They offloaded their Vudu streaming subsidiary (to NBCUniversal) in 2020, shortly before we entered the true streaming boom. However, with Amazon now making increasingly aggressive incursions into the ad-supported streaming space, especially with its somewhat unique e-commerce and streaming bundled angle, it seems Walmart is back on the attack.
Integrating Vizio into their existing retail business, given they are already one of the top Smart TV retailers on the market, should be easier than trying to build Vudu into a profitable service for them. Additionally, it is bound to eat into Roku’s hefty ⅓ market share in North America, too.
While it is never a wise idea to start counting streaming chickens before they hatch, this new development has the potential to be a major game-changer for the Smart TV space domestically. It will definitely be interesting to see how Walmart handles the rollout from here.
