$OTTV
Falcones said that VivaLiveTV could be moving up from Omniverse by inking its partnership with Comcast.
“It’s like moving houses. We’re going from a small house to a mansion,” Falcones said, adding that if Comcast wants VivaLiveTV to ditch its Omniverse deal, “then that’s what we’ll do.”
“We’re moving to bigger and better things. We’re working on increasing our subscriber base and revenues,” Falcones said.
Indeed, VivaLiveTV has recently made some announcements around bolstering its streaming TV service. The company set a deal with Sony Pictures to add the company’s movie channels to its Gold lineup, while Cine Sony will be added to Viva’s Spanish-language add-on.
VivaLiveTV also recently added DVR service, which the company just turned on today and is offering to its subscribers at no additional cost.
Those moves could just be the beginning. Falcones said that through VivaLiveTV’s partnership with Comcast it will be adding channels including NBC Sports networks and local broadcast channels, while eliminating some channels that Viva doesn’t need. Falcones said the idea is to improve VivaLiveTV’s lineup and make it more relevant on an individual market basis, something most major virtual MVPDs do through local affiliate broadcast television deals.
Even major vMVPDs like DirecTV Now and Sling TV have a hard time making lots of money, but VivaLiveTV has a lot of work to do just to break even. According to a 10-Q filed in October, Viva generated just $8,470 in subscription revenues for the three months ending July 31, 2018, while racking up $1,422,508 in total operating expenses. Overall, the company is carrying accumulated deficit totaling more than $26.5 million.
But teaming with Comcast could put Viva on a more solvent path. We’ll find out more in 2019.
