Uber & GoPuff. Amazon streams NFL games on Prime Video in 2022

Uber boosts its grocery delivery with GoPuff

Per Bloomberg:

Uber Technologies Inc. will vastly expand grocery delivery in the U.S. this summer through a partnership with GoPuff, a fast-growing delivery startup and the owner of the liquor store chain BevMo!, the companies plan to announce Tuesday.

GoPuff will make inventory of convenience store and grocery items available to Uber customers in 95 cities starting next month and nationwide by the end of the summer, the companies said. GoPuff will handle logistics and delivery for the orders, and Uber will take a percentage of each transaction made through its app.

GoPuff, which was founded in 2013, is a delivery startup that focuses on “essential items” such as snacks, pet products, beauty products or liquor. The model on which GoPuff operates is a bit different from other delivery services. Instead of having their drivers pick up items from the stores, GoPuff distributes orders from their micro-fulfillment centers strategically located in markets across the US. According to the startup, it is now operating 250+ fulfillment centers and serving more than 650 cities.

In terms of unit economics, every order on GoPuff has to be at least $10.95. The company charges users a flat delivery fee of $1.95 for every order and claims that there is no surge price. For orders that contain alcohol, there is an additional $2 to cover extra efforts to verify identifications and meet legal compliance. To avoid the flat delivery fee, users can enroll in their rewards program called GoPuff Fam for $5.95/month.

By partnering with Uber, GoPuff is hoping to use Uber’s popularity to drive more traffic and business. Once orders and revenue increase, it will make other aspects of the business easier to manage such as acquiring drivers or pleasing investors. The risk here is that the startup is sharing the customer relationship to Uber. Handling the delivery of every order from this partnership, GoPuff still interacts with the end customers. Nonetheless, at the top of the funnel, customers will still place orders within Uber. Plus, a portion of the sales goes to Uber for the privilege to be in their app. I really hope that GoPuff will structure the deal that enables them to have a marketing communication customers at the end of every order such as a coupon or discount for direct orders.

For Uber, this partnership will boost their Delivery service. While Covid-19 has (still) greatly damaged Uber’s Mobility business, it has been a game changer for the company’s Delivery business (UberEats). In Q4 FY2020, Delivery generated more than $10 billion in Gross Bookings, up from $4.7 billion just a year before. The acquisition of Drizly and Postmates highlights the importance of Delivery to Uber and the company’s ambition to be a Superapp.

The partnership with GoPuff gives Uber extra bodies. Even with drivers under the startup’s brand, Uber can still satisfy their customers with properly filled orders. But I think this partnership may be an audition or a test for what may come next. I won’t be surprised if Uber makes an offer to acquire GoPuff. There will be a lot of synergies in case of an acquisition: similarity in services, savings in marketing and personnel. More importantly, in GoPuff, Uber would acquire a network of micro-fulfillment centers and a new delivery model.

Excited to see what comes next from this partnership and space.

With 15 NFL games a year starting 2022, Amazon is making Prime Video a strategic advantage

Per WSJ

Amazon will take over exclusive video rights for “Thursday Night Football” starting in the 2022-23 season, a year earlier than anticipated, the company and the National Football League said Monday. Initially, Amazon’s deal with the NFL called for the tech giant to begin streaming games in the 2023-24 season. Current rights holder Fox Corp. agreed to exit its existing deal for the package a season early.

Terms, including the cost of acquiring the additional year of rights, weren’t disclosed. In March, Amazon signed a 10-year deal with the NFL to stream 15 games per season on its Prime Video platform. The average annual rights fee is around $1.2 billion and that is the price tag for the additional season, people familiar with the matter said.

At $1.2 billion for 15 games a year, that works out to $80 million per game. A significant price tag. But Amazon can afford to pay it. Not because of their financial strength, but also because of their Prime base. In the latest earnings call, Amazon revealed that there were 200 million Prime members, 170 million of which watched Prime Video in the past year. American football is very popular in the US, but is not everyone’s cup of tea. Let’s say if only about 20 million US subscribers watch NFL games on Prime Video, the content cost will sit around $4 per member per game. If 40 million US subscribers (12.5% of US population, not a wild guess), the content cost will go down to $2 per member per game. The more people Amazon can get to watch games, the lower that number will be. The scale of their Prime base makes Amazon one of a handful of companies in the US that can afford to invest that much in NFL games. Also, this benefit doesn’t include additional new Prime members that are on the fence and decide to subscribe to the service because of the NFL games.

Yes. Just in terms of strategy, I think there’s probably nothing new or surprising, but just to reiterate it, we look at Prime Video as a component of the broader Prime membership and making sure it’s driving adoption and retention as it is. It’s a significant acquisition channel in Prime countries. And that we look at it and see that members who watch video have higher free trial conversion rates, higher renewal rates, higher overall engagement. And there’s great examples of places like Brazil, where you launch a video-only subscription, for example, that preceded the broader Prime membership with shipping components, and that was, as an example, a great way to expose people to Amazon.

By Dave Fildes, Amazon’s Director of Investor Relations in Q1 FY2021 Earnings Call

As an end user myself since 2017, Prime Video has gotten so much better over the last few years with a bigger content library and more originals that I actually enjoy such as Jack Ryan or sports documentaries. My friends, both in the US and Germany, also have good things to say about the service. It’s no longer a peripheral service. As Dave Fildes said, it is an important component of the Prime membership to acquire and retain customers. In the fight against Walmart and their membership program Walmart+, Prime Video will prove a key advantage for Amazon. Walmart may be able to match Amazon in a lot of things, but it doesn’t have yet an equivalent to Prime Video. Plus, it’s not cheap for Walmart to catch up with its rival. Amazon spent $3 billion in video and music content alone in Q1 FY2021, up from $2.4 billion a year ago. That’s an annualized $12 billion in content, putting it up there among the biggest spenders. If Walmart wants to enrich Walmart+ and offers an equivalent to Prime Video, they are looking at a very expensive game. Even with an increase in content and shipping costs, Amazon has still generated more than $25 billion in Free Cash Flow Trailing Twelve Months in the last four quarters. As their other businesses grow and continue to pump cash into their coffer, we may see Amazon spend $20 billion a year in video and music very soon.

Disclaimer: I have a position on Amazon, Walmart and Uber