FuboTV had 315K paid subscribers at the end of 2019

Virtual MVPD fuboTV revealed in a letter to shareholders that it ended 2019 with 315,789 paid subscribers, up 37% year over year.

The company also said its 2019 revenue increased 96% year over year to $146.5 million, thanks to growth in fuboTV’s paid subscriber base, ad sales and user engagement. Subscription revenue rose 90% to $133.3 million and advertising revenue rose 201% to $12.4 million.

In the first quarter of 2020, the company expects total revenue to increase by more than 75% year over year.

FuboTV broke out its average revenue per user, which it said increased 42% to $53.80 in 2019.

FuboTV said its users (paid and free trial) streamed 298.7 million hours in 2019, a 210% increase year over year. In December 2019, fuboTV’s monthly active users watched 129 hours across the platform on average and those who streamed primarily on connected TVs watched an average of 144 hours.

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When fuboTV was founded in 2015, it was focused largely as a service for U.S. soccer fans. The service has expanded and added many entertainment channels featured in other streaming TV services, but CEO David Gandler said viewership has been impacted by the absence of live sports due to the coronavirus.

“While our business has been impacted by the reduced availability of live sporting events due to current shelter-in-place and related restrictions, we have continued to see growing engagement of our subscribers with news and entertainment content as consumers seek to stay informed and entertained,” Gandler wrote.

Looking ahead, fuboTV said its key priorities for 2020 are growing the content portfolio (including 4K and fuboTV-produced original programming), further innovating and personalizing its product offering, and expanding the business internationally (fuboTV launched in Spain in 2018).

The letter was the company’s first since going public after merging with FaceBank Group but Gandler said that FaceBank’s financial results for fiscal 2019 won’t include fuboTV results. As such, the company decided to provide certain select audited financial results of stand-alone fuboTV for the year ended December 31, 2019 and unaudited estimates for the quarter ended March 31, 2020.