Can Versant Make Fandango A FAST Power With Live Sports

Versant Media is transforming Fandango into a free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) platform, leveraging live sports to compete with services like Tubi and Roku Channel. The company, spun off from NBCUniversal, launched a "We love free" campaign for the rebranded Fandango. A major five-year deal with Germany's Bundesliga will bring over 300 soccer matches to Fandango and USA Network, complementing its existing English Premier League partnership. These free-to-stream sports aim to attract viewers and advertisers, boosting carriage negotiations. Fandango will also feature 3,500 hours of content from Versant's cable networks, including Golf Channel and MS Now. This strategy seeks to retain Fandango's 50 million monthly movie ticket visitors and expand its audience, with Versant actively pursuing more sports rights beyond the costly NFL.

Versant Media, the collection of cast-off NBCUniversal cable networks now an independent company, is betting that live sports, including a new deal with Germany’s Bundesliga, can help it turn Fandango into something more than a place to get movie tickets. The company has quietly evolved its Fandango At Home streaming operation into something more than that, a FAST platform just called Fandango and designed to compete with Tubi and the Roku Channel. This week, the rechristened offering launched a hefty marketing campaign around the phrase “We love free.” It positions Fandango, long a place to pre-buy movie tickets or get premium digital downloads, as a bargain destination for TV, competing with outlets such as the Roku Channel, Tubi, and Pluto, as well as FAST offerings from many of the big TV manufacturers, including Walmart-owned Vizio, LG and Samsung. The company also announced a deal with Germany’s top pro soccer league, the Bundesliga, for more than 300 matches over the next five years, to be split between Fandango and Versant’s USA Network, USA Sports President Matthew Hong told CNBC (another Versant holding). Hong said the Bundesliga deal should help the company when it comes time to negotiate carriage deals with cable providers, and with potential advertisers. It also ties nicely with the company’s existing partnership with the English Premiere League, generally considered the world’s best pro league. Both the EPL and Bundesliga are set to launch their 2026-27 season at the end of August, with interest in the United States expected to be sky high, boosted by record viewership of the World Cup over the past month. Many stars of the top World Cup teams star the rest of the year with clubs in either the EPL or Bundesliga. “It’s been hugely beneficial for us,” Hong said of the EPL deal. “European soccer and soccer generally is up and to the right in the United States.” Hong also differentiated, if subtly, the opportunity for soccer fans in watching Bundesliga on Fandango: no subscription fee. That’s unlike the North American top pro league, MLS, with its Apple TV deal. For that matter, other slices of European club, including more EPL games, stayed behind with the subscription Peacock service when Versant spun out of Comcast early in the year. “You don’t need a paid account to stream the games,” said Hong. “You’ll be able to watch multiple hundreds of Bundesliga matches in a way I can’t imagine could be any easier.” The Bundesliga is considered another of Europe’s best pro leagues, long dominated by Bayern Munich, though Bayer...