On the same day his company released an ad campaign taking shots at traditional cable TV service, Sling TV CEO Roger Lynch took aim at his live-streaming service’s closest competition, Sony PlayStation Vue.
What is the advantage over traditional pay TV, he wonders, of a live streaming service like Vue that swells to a monthly price of around $55 for a thick bundle of over 100 channels.
"To me, it's recreating the sins of the past," Lynch said to Business Insider. "I don't think that just recreating [the traditional pay-TV bundle] will materially change the trajectory of the industry,"
On Monday, SNL Kagan released estimates suggesting that Sling TV has amassed around 764,000 subscribers as the first IP-based pay-TV service to launch in February 2015.
However, from Hulu to DirecTV Now, a number of big virtual pay-TV service launches are coming up.
Lynch doesn’t think they’ll be able to match the slimness of Sling TV’s bundle, which starts out at $20 a month for ESPN and a package of other major cable networks.
"It's not that likely that they end up dumping a bunch of channels out of the base package," Lynch said. There's a lot of institutional pressure to protect the big bundle, he says.
Earlier in the week, Sling TV introduced a new TV ad campaign starring character actor Danny Trejo. The commercials take aim at “cable,” and seemingly expand the market share Sling TV is targeting beyond just the cord nevers it originally set its sights on.
"There are 40 million active streaming players [Roku, Apple TV, etc.] in the U.S.,” Lynch added. “That’s mass market ...It's undeniable that traditional pay-TV subscribers are in decline,"
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