Earlier this week, FuboTV (FUBO -3.57%) extended its sports-streaming media reach to a massive platform. The Fubo Sports Network is now available in the Freevee sections of Amazon (AMZN -2.56%) Prime, adding more than 155 million devices across a variety of media-streaming hardware platforms.
This agreement seems important at first glance. Unfortunately, I'm not convinced that it will help fuboTV (or Amazon) a whole lot. Here's why.
The numbers game
This ain't FuboTV's first rodeo. Fubo Sports Network is already available on many popular platforms, including the Roku Channel, the Vizio smart TV platform, and Fox Corporation's Tubi service. Vizio has more than 15 million active users, while Tubi brings at least 51 million accounts to the party. Roku is the biggest name on this list with 65.4 million active users.
Freevee, formerly known as IMDb TV, is ostensibly a larger platform than these three earlier Fubo Sports Network partners together. So far, so good -- Amazon's service still looks powerful in this company.
Clumsy is as clumsy does
The story doesn't end there. Amazon doesn't make it easy to find and use the Freevee service -- and it's even harder to fire up the specific ad-supported live-TV channel you actually want to watch on that platform. Amazon Prime Video's landing page doesn't give me a handy link to the brand-new FuboTV content.
The only method that worked for me was to find "sports" in Prime Video's list of content categories and then scroll down to the list of "sports stations -- on now." Finally, I clicked my way over to the right on that list until the correct channel showed up, a couple of pages later.
That was the process in a web browser, and the method didn't change much on my phone. The interface looked different on an Amazon Fire TV stick, and the clicks were more numerous.
I found it cumbersome and time-consuming to start up Fubo Sports Network through the Amazon Prime Video service in all of these cases. Searching for "Fubo" got me nowhere. The same was true when searching for the full channel name or the show that happened to be on the air at the time. The only way in was through a maze of menu options.
Once I found it, I couldn't find any way to add this channel to a "watch later" list or some collection of favorite channels. After leaving it on for a couple of hours, Fubo's channel didn't even pop up in Prime Video's and Freevee's "continue watching" sections.
Well, I could simply skip the Prime Video challenge and go straight to Fubo TV, instead. The channel is available for free, even if you aren't a subscriber to the premium FuboTV service. In this format, many of the paid ads you see on the Prime Video version of Fubo Sports Network are replaced by marketing spots for the ad-supported streaming service itself.
Does this deal help either FuboTV or Amazon?
I would have loved to be a fly on the wall when this deal was signed. Somebody dropped the ball, and I'm not even sure on which side of the negotiating table.
Amazon doesn't look like a very helpful partner here, and I'm being generous. FuboTV might expect its larger media-streaming partner to contribute some meaningful marketing assistance and perhaps an easy-to-spot link to the new partner's content on Prime Video's landing page. At the very least, Prime Video's search function should help you find the channel.
I don't expect this deal to move the needle for FuboTV in any meaningful way. The deal strikes me as a lost opportunity. Those untold millions of Amazon-based new viewers don't amount to much if none of them are stumbling over the new addition.
On the flip side of the same coin, Amazon would almost certainly benefit from trying a bit harder, too. The IMDb TV was rebranded to Freevee to make more Amazon Prime subscribers notice this service and take advantage of it. FuboTV is a well-respected name in sports broadcasting, and I imagine that a more ambitious co-branding project could have raised Freevee's profile, as well.
As a longtime Amazon shareholder, I'm disappointed by this minimal effort, but I'm not really surprised.
The company does a great job promoting its products and services but is much less likely to deliver high-quality marketing muscle for other companies. That's just the way Amazon rolls, for better or worse.
Maybe FuboTV could have ponied up a larger distribution fee to secure a better marketing service -- and maybe there was no such option on the table. We may never know. Either way, this fumbled exchange neither helps nor harms Amazon and FuboTV investors.
