Paramount+ Used ‘Halo,’ ‘Tracker’ to Keep Customers Who Signed Up to Watch Super Bowl LVIII
In an interview, Paramount chief marketing officer Domenic DiMeglio said that Paramount+ had retained more Super Bowl subscribers than expected.
The Super Bowl is always the largest television event of the entire year, and February’s Big Game was no exception. Super Bowl LVIII pulled in 123.7 million viewers according to Nielsen, including millions of customers who decided to watch the Big Game on Paramount+. A majority of customers who signed up to watch the Super Bowl via Paramount+ remained subscribers at the end of February, and Paramount chief marketing officer and head of streaming data Domenic DiMeglio recently sat down with The Wrap to discuss the company’s success.
- Paramount+ gained 3.4 million new subscribers during the three days leading up to Super Bowl LVIII, according to Antenna.
- DiMeglio said that the company managed to retain so many of these viewers by steering them to ‘Halo’ and ‘Tracker,’ which are some of March’s top titles on the streamer.
- The CMO also said that live sports are an important offering for Paramount+, especially the NFL, which is a key driver of new customers and of engagement.
As measured by Antenna, Super Bowl LVIII between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers drew in 3.4 million subscribers to Paramount+ in the days ahead of the game. Antenna measured that 65% of those who signed up to watch the NFL’s Big Game had kept their paid plan or converted from a free trial to a paid subscription by the end of February.
DiMeglio declined to confirm those specific numbers in his discussions with The Wrap, but he did repeat a statistic first floated by Paramount CEO Bob Bakish in late February. Both executives said that the company sees people who come to Paramount+ to watch sports spend 90% of their time on the platform watching something else, and DiMeglio said that has helped the streamer retain Super Bowl subscribers.
“For us, we had some benchmarks, we had some goals, and we exceeded our expectations on the trial-to-pay conversion,” DiMeglio said. “So we eked out a few points better than we were expecting and shooting for, so that that felt really good. Then from there, we’re now seeing monthlong retention and also feeling good about how we’re holding on to that cohort.”
When asked how the streamer had accomplished a high retention rate of viewers who subscribed to watch the Super Bowl, DiMeglio pointed to two factors. First, new Paramount+ subscribers are presented with a “show picker” upon registration that allows them to select the titles that they are most interested in. From there, the streamer puts those shows — along with similar titles — front-and-center when a customer logs into their Paramount+ account.
Funneling people to a new show after the conclusion of the game was a big goal, as well. Traditionally, broadcast networks that carry the Super Bowl have used the timeslot immediately following the game to air a premiere special episode of a marquee show in order to keep audiences watching, and Paramount+ used a similar strategy. It used the streaming original “Halo” and the new CBS series “Tracker” to woo Super Bowl audiences, and those shows were still Paramount+’s No. 1 and No. 2 shows in March.
What’s the Future of Sports on Paramount+?
Zooming out from Paramount+ to examine Paramount Global’s current position, some viewers might well wonder if the company is considering letting go of live sports. Paramount Global is currently entertaining merger and acquisition discussions as it tries to sort out its future, and big-name sports rights cost quite a bit of money. Paramount owes the NFL $2 billion per season for its Sunday afternoon package of games, and that’s just one sport. With golf, college football, college basketball, and much more in CBS, Paramount+ also streams UEFA Champions League soccer, auto racing, and more.
DiMeglio’s words don’t sound as if the company is entertaining thoughts of ditching live football streams, however.
“The NFL is a huge driver of new signups for us every single year,” he said. “It’s a great driver of viewership as well and engagement.”
He touted the six years remaining on Paramount’s deal with UEFA and also pointed to upcoming coverage of the Masters golf tournament. In addition to these sports, Paramount+ offers a wide variety of soccer games from various global leagues on its free-to-stream Golazo Network, which is available on Paramount’s free streaming platform Pluto TV as well.
“We’re huge proponents of sports, we think it’s an important ingredient in a broad pay service that has coast-to-coast total household appeal,” DiMeglio continued. “It’s also in our DNA with CBS Sports, there’s no better brand in sports and it’s been so synonymous with championship sports from Super Bowls to March Madness to the Masters.”
Paramount may be fielding serious offers to purchase part or all of its company at the moment, but its executives don’t sound as if trimming the number of sports offered on Paramount+ to cut costs will be on the table for the company. For now, the company is relying on more traditional content cuts to help it trim the fat, and its success in pulling in new customers for Super Bowl LVIII and keeping them signed up suggests Paramount+ will do everything it can to maintain its sports catalog going forward.
Paramount Plus
Paramount+ is a subscription video streaming service that includes on-demand access to 40,000+ TV show episodes from BET, CBS, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, Nick Jr. and more. The lineup includes “1883,” “Tulsa King,” “Star Trek: Discovery,” Nickelodeon’s “SpongeBob SquarePants,” and “PAW Patrol.” Subscribers can watch the NFL, college football, The Masters, college basketball, UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa, Serie A, and NWSL. The service also offers the option to watch your live CBS affiliate. The upgraded ad-free package includes premium movies and shows from Showtime.