THE FUTURE OF THE TV AND VIDEO LANDSCAPE By Alexander Mogg, partner, strategy and operations lead TMT Germany, Klaus Böhm, director, media and entertainment lead Germany, and Ralf Esser, senior manager, head of TMT Insights Germany at Deloitte Consulting
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he rise of on-demand-services, new market entrants, and fundamental changes in consumer demand for TV and video consumption has seen the established players confronted with horrifying news about their positioning and future in the TV and video landscape. But will these dramatic predictions really come true? It is true that TV and video are facing many uncertainties, and the extent of change in the industry is hard to predict. Streaming services no longer serve only as a platform for films and TV shows, they are also investing into producing and licensing their own content. This makes them direct competitors to the traditional TV and video industry. At the same time, TV channels and media organisations are starting their own on-demand offerings, while large content producers are also setting up streaming services themselves. From another perspective, on-demand services have rapidly changed consumer appetite for TV and video services. With the success of video-on-demand (VoD), consumers increasingly expect relevant content they can access at any time, any place and in the format that best suits their needs. SCENARIO APPROACH This rapidly changing market landscape makes predicting the future difficult, if not impossible. Deloitte has therefore adopted a more holistic scenario approach which will transport us to the year 2030. The four scenarios we have developed do not aim to predict the most likely outcome, but to illustrate what could plausibly happen in the world of TV and video and how today’s market players might adapt to deal with the many changes and uncertainties along the way. Our analysis is based on a comprehensive list of relevant drivers. Following workshop sessions and expert interviews, those drivers were rated with regard to their degree of uncertainty and their impact on the TV and video industry. Our experts then identified a combination of two critical uncertainties that create the most challenging, divergent, and relevant scenarios. The result is a scenario matrix built on two axes that address the critical uncertainties by asking the
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questions, “What will the player structure look like?” and “Who will have access to customers?” On the axis responding to “What will the player structure look like?”, the TV and video landscape could be driven either by national players, meaning that the industry does not continue to globalise, or by global players who push national players to the fringes. The second axis or critical uncertainty that determines the future of video is “Who will have access to customers?”. This raises the question whether content owners or platform owners