The new year is just kicking off but the close of 2022 marked the end for one pay TV company as Evoca – a provider that uses NextGen TV ATSC 3.0 broadcast signals – shuttered service after it was unable to raise funding it needed to continue operations.
About a month prior Evoca had warned a shutdown was imminent absent a capital infusion. In a December 30 message to customers the provider, which offers a skinny bundle of around 60 channels starting at $25 per month, disclosed it would discontinue service at the end of 2022.
“We are grateful for your support as we challenged the media monopolies to make regional sports and local content more accessible and affordable,” Evoca stated on its website. “Unfortunately, we could not secure the funding that we need to continue operations into 2023. We must discontinue programming on December 31st, 2022.”
Evoca, which first officially launched service in 2020 and expanded to markets in a handful of states, told customers their accounts would be closed and no longer be billed. It also said subscribers don’t need to return equipment and can keep their NextGen TV receiver, which can still be used to watch over-the-air stations and to stream apps.
While Evoca shuttering service doesn’t come as a complete surprise given its warnings, company executives up until the final days had been working to secure funding, and earlier indicated some optimism that it would.
In early December President and CEO Todd Achilles told NextTV he remained optimistic that the company would get through financial constraints and be able to return to growth. And as recently as last week, two days before officially disclosing a shutdown, Achilles told RBR+TVBR that Evoca continued to work on getting funding “and hope to close by the end of the week.”
The fledgling pay TV service was founded in 2018 and largely uses ATSC 3.0 broadcast signals, along with IP-based delivery. It put a particular emphasis on regional sports networks, including carriage deals with ROOT Sports in Oregon and Washington, as well as Altitude Sports - an RSN also carried by sports-centric vMVPD Fubo TV – to offer live Denver Nuggets and Colorado Avalanche games.
As it fought to keep operations going, Evoca also tried to rally public support. As spotted by LightReading, the company started a Change.org petition aimed at Stan Kroenke, whose sports empire includes the Denver Nuggets and Colorado Avalanche, and Dick Monfort, owner, chairman and CEO of the Colorado Rockies, to keep the service alive – but garnered less than 3,000 signatures.
Evoca had positioned itself as an attractive option for cord-cutters in Western areas of the U.S. that might not have many affordable options for pay TV, with its offering of sports including RSN coverage at a low price point. In May the company debuted a Sling TV bundle as it launched service in Portland, Oregon, bringing national channels to the TV offering as an add-on.
“We’re really the first ones to crack the code on a ‘skinny bundle’ of local content and regional sports – what we’re doing in our markets for $25 a month,” Achilles told Fierce in May.
In addition to its skinny bundle offering, Evoca is one of the early pay TV providers tapping ATSC 3.0, as broadcasters look to NextGen TV as a way to deliver enhanced TV, as well as, other services more efficiently.
Achilles, in an earlier interview with Fierce, noted the ATSC 3.0 approach is essentially over-the-air (OTA) converged with streaming and OTT elements.
“This is like a whole new way to deliver TV into homes, to break through all of these unnecessarily expensive services and just deliver a great bundle,” he said in May. “That’s what people want.”
Evoca has not disclosed subscriber counts for its pay TV service but earlier stated plans to reach tens of millions of U.S. households over the next few years.