With Netflix securing the exclusive U.S. rights to the FIFA Women’s World Cup for 2027 and 2031, here’s a breakdown of previous TV and streaming viewership in 2023, 2019 and 2015.

𝗜𝗻 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟯, the Women’s World Cup stage match, in which the United States tied with the Netherlands, 𝗮𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗱 𝟲.𝟰 𝗺𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄𝗲𝗿𝘀 on FOX. It was the most-watched game in 2023 since the U.S. Women’s Team was knocked out in round 16, resulting in the 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱 𝗖𝘂𝗽 𝗙𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗮𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝟮.𝟮 𝗺𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗻 viewers across FOX, Telemundo, Universo and Peacock.
𝗜𝗻 𝟮𝟬𝟭𝟵, the Women’s World Cup final, in which the United States beat the Netherlands, drew 𝟭𝟯.𝟵 𝗺𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄𝗲𝗿𝘀 on FOX and had 𝟮𝟴𝟵,𝟬𝟬𝟬 𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴 the game (AMA). Telemundo added 1.6 million viewers.
𝗜𝗻 𝟮𝟬𝟭𝟱, the Women’s World Cup final, in which the United States beat Japan, 𝗮𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗱 𝟭𝟲 𝗺𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄𝗲𝗿𝘀 on FOX, 𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗱 𝗮𝘁 𝟮𝟯 𝗺𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗻 and had 𝟳𝟮,𝟬𝟬𝟬 𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗴𝗮𝗺𝗲 (AMA). Telemundo added 1.2 million viewers.

Due to the different locations of the tournament, viewership is impacted by the start times. The 2023 final started at 6am ET, the 2019 final started at 11am ET, and the 2015 final began at 7pm ET.

Netflix has secured the exclusive U.S. rights to the FIFA Women’s World Cup for 2027 and 2031 and will include both English and Spanish telecasts. The 32-team, 64-game tournament in 2027 will be played in July in Brazil.

Some have suggested that with Netflix’s exclusive deal for the U.S. broadcast rights moving from TV to streaming, FIFA and U.S. Soccer risk losing an American audience. However, when looking at the subscriber numbers of the two, I don’t see how they came to that conclusion. At the end of the third quarter of 2024, Netflix had 66.7 million paid subscribers in the U.S. At the end of 2024, it is estimated that there will be 65-70 million pay TV households in the U.S. At the current cord-cutting rate, Netflix will have more U.S. subscribers than pay TV by 2027.

We don’t know how much Netflix paid for the rights, but the 𝗕𝗕𝗖 𝘀𝗮𝗶𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗱 £𝟵 𝗺𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝗻 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟯 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗨𝗞 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗜𝗧𝗩. Last year, FIFA’s chief partnerships and media officer threatened not to broadcast the FIFA Women’s World Cup in the big five European countries, saying the bids were too low and “unacceptable.” Months later, the international soccer federation announced that it had agreed to extend its partnership with the European Broadcasting Union, enabling the tournament to be shown across EBU’s free-to-air-linear network across 34 European territories. The value of the deal was not disclosed.

As we end the year, I want to thank all those who read my content and contributed to the discussions. I’ll end 2024 with almost 9 million impressions on LinkedIn, with 932,000 members reached. Adding in more than 2 million impressions from my blog, 30,000 downloads of my podcast and an unknown amount of traffic from Twitter, that’s over 12 million impressions across all platforms. On LinkedIn, nine posts about Netflix generated more than 1 million impressions combined, and ten posts about the CDN industry generated 1 million impressions as well. Posts about earnings numbers and details from filings also contributed a large percentage of impressions.

I started my blog 17 years ago, and across the blog, LinkedIn, Twitter and my podcast, my content has always been 100% free to read. Over that time, many have tried to convince me to monetize my content via paywalls, charging for substack newsletters or selling limited access. That’s not why I do this. Not everyone is driven by the need to monetize content. I play the long game, chess over checkers. If you showcase your expertise and spend the time to produce quality content, great opportunities will come your way.

Some think I am crazy to have published my cell phone number publicly for 20 years and, on average, reply to all calls and emails within 24 hours. However, as I wrote in a blog post entitled “Tips On How To Build A Successful Personal Brand And Make It Into A Business,” there is no shortcut to building a personal brand. You either put in the work or you don’t. You can read that blog post here: https://lnkd.in/ejG48PrS

The industry has taken great care of me over the past three decades, for which I am grateful. I feel a sense of responsibility to help grow the industry by doing my best to inform, educate and empower others, connecting them to those smarter than myself. Good leaders invest in people, not ideas, and they understand that the progress of one is the progress of all. For all those who have contributed to the discussions, pointed out my spelling mistakes, sent me messages thanking me for my posts and helped educate me on topics they know better than myself – I thank you. Happy Holidays! 

On Christmas, Netflix said US viewership of its NFL games peaked with the Beyonce Bowl at 27 million viewers. The Ravens-Texans game had 24.3 million AMA, and the Chiefs-Steelers matchup came in at 24.1 million AMA. Global ratings and additional US insights will be released on December 31. The AMA (average minute audience) viewership figures are based on Fast National Live + Same Day data from Nielsen, which includes out-of-home viewing and CBS local market viewing along with mobile and web data from Netflix and NFL+ mobile viewing from NFL.

To see how this compares to previous live-streaming events, see my post that lists the top 20 largest events. A breakdown of the Super Bowl streaming viewership numbers can be found here.

Netflix’s NFL stream is live, and so far, my initial stream connections across iOS, desktop, Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV, Samsung, LG and Vizio are all looking good. I’ll be updating this blog post throughout the day. I use two separate Netflix accounts and do not run more than four streams simultaneously. All devices connected to the TVs are wired with the MacBook and iPads on wifi. My ISP at home is Optimum, 500Mbps, and I am also running on a neighbor’s Verizon 1 Gig connection. You can contribute to the discussion taking place on my LinkedIn post here. You can jump here in the post for tech details tied to chunking, protocols, subtitles etc.

Updated December 26: Netflix said US viewership of the NFL games was 24.3 million AMA for the Ravens-Texans game and 24.1 million AMA for the Chiefs-Steelers matchup. US viewership for the Ravens-Texans game peaked with the Beyonce Bowl at 27 million viewers. Global viewership numbers will be released on December 31st.

1:29pm ET: Startup times across all devices are fast, averaging 1-3 seconds, depending on the platform. Latency, which I will detail later, varies widely based on the platform compared to OTA in local markets.

1:40pm ET: Some users report streams stopping after starting, and I’ve now experienced being kicked off a stream on an iPad. For another iPad, I can’t login to Netflix with an error of “Network Error. Please try again later.”

1:46pm ET: Truly a global audience for the game, with users showing photos of their stream from Yemen, Romania, Turkey, Scotland, Mexico, Africa, Israel, Sweden and many other countries.

2:00pm ET: Some users report having to scrub to the live stream once joining the stream. Comments online include “You click on Watch Live, and it just takes you into the gameday coverage. You have to pause and slide to get to the actual live game,” and “I have to fast forward it to get to live.” I had this experience once when I exited the app on the Fire TV stick and rejoined the stream.

2:03pm ET: Some complaints from users online of being unable to cast from their phone to the TV, but that’s not something that Netflix supports in the ad tier version of Netflix. Per Netflix’s website, “Using a mobile device to watch Netflix on a TV isn’t available with an ad-supported experience. To use your mobile device to watch Netflix on your TV, you’ll need to change to an ad-free plan.” Users can connect using Chromecast built-in (Formerly Google Cast) TVs with Chromecast built-in allow you to cast from your mobile device to the TV. Chromecast built-in is only available on Philips, Polaroid, Sharp, Skyworth, Soniq, Sony, Toshiba, and Vizio TVs.

2:45pm ET: Some viewers comment online that the video quality looks bad, saying it “looks horrible,” “terrible quality,” etc. Still, there’s no way to know what they mean, whether it’s an actual tech issue or just a user’s preference for the video quality they want. I’m getting a mix of picture quality, and the stream looks excellent on TVs, across Apple TV and Fire TV, but on the Roku and iPads, I see some artifacts.

3:00pm ET: There are a few reports of network errors, but they don’t seem widespread. I’ve been contacting users posting comments on Twitter for their Country/City/ISP details, but I don’t see any widespread problems across a specific ISP.

3:17pm ET: Netflix provides audio in English, Portuguese, French, Spanish, and German, as well as subtitles in English. For me, the subtitles are about 10 seconds behind the action on the iPad and 6 seconds behind on Fire TV and Apple TV. Netflix does not support iPads running iOS 16 or earlier, which accounts for two online complaints with users running older iPads that can’t be updated. Users are reporting some issues, such as problems on their end with what their device can support, something we see from all live streaming events.

3:47pm ET: Some tech details

– Netflix is doing (Corrected 12/26: 2 second chunks) 3-second chunks, subtitles are time XML-based time text markup, and the stream uses CMAF/DASH (H264, no AV1 support seen). Someone who sent me some data noticed that Netflix doesn’t “show” the complete list of available profiles/qualities in the stream manifests. They pre-initialize the stream, check your device, browser and network speed and pick the best option, giving a single quality profile in the manifest. Most would agree that this is a good approach when you are in charge of the whole workflow, as Netflix is.

Netflix is switching domains/CNAMEs of the stream based on several conditions, such as your ISP, IPv4/6, etc. Netlfix’s video player only requests the manifest during player initialization, and video and audio + subtitles are encoded separately. This makes sense due to the multi-language support. In the URL, the query strings show a few details. Netflix generated the URLs to expire after 12 hours and encrypted hash, server-side authentication is being used.

video:
Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from ‘https://[redacted by Dan]’: Metadata: major_brand : iso6 minor_version : 1 compatible_brands: cmafcmfcdashiso6 creation_time : 2024-12-25T12:34:11.000000Z Duration: N/A, bitrate: N/A Stream #0:0[0x1](und): Video: h264 (avc1 / 0x31637661), none(tv, bt709), 1920×1080, SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9, 30k tbr, 30k tbn (default) Metadata: creation_time : 2024-12-25T12:00:00.000000Z handler_name : ETI ISO Video Media Handler vendor_id : [0][0][0][0] Side data: unknown side data type 24 (834 bytes)

audio:
Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from ‘https://[redacted by Dan]’: Metadata: major_brand : iso6 minor_version : 1 compatible_brands: cmafcmfcdashiso6 creation_time : 2024-12-25T12:34:11.000000Z Duration: N/A, bitrate: N/A Stream #0:0[0x1](und): Audio: aac (mp4a / 0x6134706D), 48000 Hz, stereo, fltp, 128 kb/s (default) Metadata: creation_time : 2024-12-25T12:00:00.000000Z handler_name : ETI ISO Audio Media Handler vendor_id : [0][0][0][0]

5:20pm ET: To compare latency, I had viewers in DC and Texas compare their OTA feed to my streaming feed in NY. Compared to OTA, the streaming latency on a MacBook was 16 seconds, 14 seconds on the Fire TV, 3 seconds on an iPad and 10 seconds for Roku and Apple TV. The feedback I received from users in Europe and LATAM averaged about 20 seconds (no specs on their hardware). I think latency is not as significant a problem as many in the industry suggest.

6:32pm ET: Beyonce’s performance is over, and I see no issues reported by users in volume. With the performance over and the game now a blowout with a score of 24-2 in the 3rd quarter, I suspect viewership has dropped from its peak.

7:35pm ET: The stream is over. We are now waiting for viewership numbers, which will be lower than the boxing event, based on some data ISPs have shared with me. I give Netflix an A on the stream. Tonight wasn’t just a big day for Netflix but for the entire industry. Their success as a company equals success for everyone in the streaming industry. The progress of one is the progress of all.

Since Netflix’s live boxing event, I’ve talked to more than half a dozen ISPs globally and others who had direct insight into traffic during the event. Based on those conversations, info from manifest files, error codes, and other sources I will not disclose, here’s part of what happened during the event and what to watch for during Netflix’s NFL games on Christmas.

Post-event, some quickly suggested that ISPs ran out of “capacity” while not even defining what capacity they were referring to. For most ISPs, almost all of Netflix’s traffic was carried on private network interconnects and appliances. Of the seven ISPs I spoke with, located in the US, Europe and another location, none had any capacity issues with peering, transit or private interconnects. In conversations with ISPs and what some ISPs posted online, they said:

• “We have plenty of capacity with them in the form of OCAs and Private interconnects.”
• “We had plenty of OCA bandwidth capacity and overhead available.”
• “None of our paths that feed our OCAs were at capacity.”
• “We had a healthy overhead of Netflix interconnect/OCA.”
• “None of our connections with Netflix were saturated.”

Multiple ISPs told me how they had the fight and regular programming streaming from an OCA closest to them, and only the fight had issues, which is very telling. That’s why Netflix’s SVOD content and other non-Netflix streaming services looked fine. Netlfix deploys caches differently based on the ISP and region of the world, with some ISPs having Netflix caches in some of their larger telco central offices and cable headends and others having direct private peering connections with them at core sites, among other connection options.

Netflix did not use any third-party CDNs for the boxing event and is not currently adding any third-party CDNs into the mix for the NFL games. Anyone who said that Netflix used them for the boxing event or wondered if they did should stop guessing. It’s public info, as you can see in traceroutes and by talking to those involved in the event. Netflix is utilizing the same infrastructure to deliver live streams and VOD content, and some statements by those on LinkedIn that Netflix is using a “separate” infrastructure for live is not accurate. Netflix spins up and down resources needed for their Open Connect servers and doesn’t have any hardware “limitations” across Open Connect for live like some want to suggest.

Looking at data from manifest files and other sources, from what I and others observed, it was interesting to see Netflix doing 1-second segments, which was surprising. One of the key technical issues I saw was that manifest files were not refreshing at times, leading to connection errors. I sorted through more than 1,000 posts on Twitter from users who provided screenshots of errors, and the three errors below were the most commonly reported from what I saw.

• Netfix Error TVQ-PB-101 (5.3): This error happens when an issue with data stored on the user’s device stops Netflix from playing. It requires a restart of the device.
• Netflix Error TVQ-PB-101 (3.2.400): This error happens when a network issue stops the device from reaching Netflix. Users who get the error on any device other than a Roku or smart TV are asked on Netflix’s website to contact Netflix to help them “investigate” the issue, and Netflix’s support site provides no suggestions for solving the problem.
• Netflix Error: UI-113 and NSEZ-403: This error happens when a network issue stops the user’s device from reaching Netflix and can’t connect to the user’s account, with Netflix suggesting to “try again later.”

Some LinkedIn posts suggested that Netflix should have prepared better for the event by “simulating” more traffic in advance, which is a ridiculous statement. Those making such comments show their lack of understanding of how live events work. No company can simulate 65 million simultaneous streams across any network in a real-world test. As Netflix said post-event, “It’s impossible for our engineering team to test that magnitude of traffic and viewership unless they have a real, live thing, which is what happened.” It’s also important to note that Netflix had no previous streaming telemetry and viewing data specific to live, in any significant quantity, to know from a regional standpoint where the most viewership would come from. They were using VOD viewership data to try and figure out live traffic, and it’s easy to warm up caches for VOD, something you can’t do with a live stream.

To tune stream performance during a live event, you need enough real-time network telemetry and observability data to make the tuning decisions. The boxing event was Netflix’s first large-scale live streaming event on their platform. I don’t know how many logs Netflix was processing per second, but for a recent live event with an AMA of just over 10 million, the content owner told me they were processing 15 million log records per second. With Netflix having so much data from the boxing event to put towards tuning QoE for the NFL games, I would expect the user experience for the NFL stream on Christmas to be vastly improved over the boxing event.

While no one knows how many simultaneous viewers Netflix will get for the NFL games on Christmas, I expect it to be less than the boxing event. The boxing stream had people tuning in from many different regions globally because the event was more of an entertainment spectacle than a pro boxing fight. The NFL games will see more traffic coming from the US, and Netflix knows what US regions will have the most viewership for the game based on the team’s local markets. That said, Beyonce performing at halftime is an entertainment event, not a sports one, so I would expect Netflix to see a surge of non-football viewers if they can time the halftime show accurately.

A not-often-mentioned but critical point is that Netflix’s boxing event was initially scheduled for July 20th. If the event had occurred on that date and not been postponed to November 15th due to Tyson’s injury, Netflix would have had 5 months between the boxing event and the NFL games on Christmas to help tune its network. However, due to the schedule change, Netflix’s 5-month window to prepare for Christmas dropped to 45 days. Those who do live events for a living understand the level of what Netflix is looking to pull off at a scale not seen before, with a timeline that is unheard of. Adding to the complexity is that a Netflix executive was recently quoted as saying that Christmas is the largest viewing day on their platform.

Using the simultaneous streams methodology, I estimate viewership will be in the 40-50 million range for the NFL stream on Christmas. The wild card in the guess is that Netflix has never given global streaming rights to any platform for an NFL game. In 2023, the Las Vegas Raiders and Kansas City Chiefs drew an average TV audience of more than 29 million viewers on CBS, making it the most-watched Christmas Day game in 34 years. If you compare that number to TV broadcasts from previous years, note that out-of-home viewing was not included in Nielsen final nationals until 2020. Between global rights, large viewership on Christmas day and Beyonce as the halftime show, there are elements to the stream where no previous data exists to make a comparison.

After the boxing event, there were more than a few posts on LinkedIn that gave out false information, made-up numbers, and opinions disguised as facts, using terms with no definition. Before you share any of these posts, please stop and look at the source of the info, any data or numbers presented, and the words used. These posts and their sharing don’t help the industry; they set us back. If we talk about the challenges of delivering video at scale with excellent QoE, the conversations need to be based on facts, not guesses or pitches for P2P products from vendors. Netflix publishes a lot of technical information about Open Connect publicly and presents at multiple shows that detail a lot, but not all, of what they have built.

My post does not capture all of the technical elements and challenges Netflix had during its boxing event. Still, quite a few pieces of information were shared on public platforms and in private conversations, providing a little insight into what took place. Some additional details I have can’t be disclosed but have been used on background. For Netflix’s games on Christmas, I have put together a team of people from across the industry who are in the infrastructure trenches and will have access to real-time stream data. They will contribute information to me during the event and remain unnamed as I blog about it. If Netflix pulls off the NFL games with minimal hiccups, which is my hope, I’ll have nothing to blog about, which would be good. Their success in streaming the NFL games would be a success for the entire streaming industry, and we should all be rooting for them. In this case, the progress of one would be the progress of all.

Here’s a link to the discussion on this topic on LinkedIn.

The economics of the CDN business have never changed. Vendors spend money to put capacity in place, hoping that over time, they get more bits to deliver and the economics of scale kicks in. It’s a gamble with a high risk of failure. Many vendors bet on 4K/8K/Metaverse/AR/VR “insert non-sense consumer app here,” but they didn’t get the additional volume they were betting on. As a result, they could not grow their business at the level they needed to to get to a scale where they could lower their costs enough to make the business work.

Deployment architecture is also a significant factor in determining success. CDNs must be able to deliver content with the QoS that customers demand while keeping their costs down. Efficiency is EVERYTHING. Akamai realized this early on and started working with ISPs to deliver customer content from caches within ISPs or connected to ISPs via peering/transit/interconnects. For some reason, Limelight thought it best not to work with ISPs to deploy caches in large quantities, with less than 10% of their traffic ever being served via ISP relationships. Instead, Limelight focused on delivering bits from “dense Super PoPs” that were far more expensive to build and maintain. Edgio’s direct cost on the Limelight network was around $0.0005 per GB delivered, while Akamai’s cost is less than half that.

When you sell a delivery service for less than it costs you to deliver it, you only survive based on the money you can raise to keep the business going. When interest rates increase on borrowed money, vendors can no longer afford the interest payments, and they go out of business. It’s simple economics. What happened to Edgio is the same thing that happened to iBEAM, Panther Express and other CDNs from twenty years ago. The times have changed, but the business economics haven’t. See www.cdnlist.com

The biggest problem with the CDN business has ALWAYS been vendors and industry people suggesting the total addressable market (TAM) for CDN delivery services is larger than it is. When executives at any company don’t live in reality and don’t understand the market, they will go out of business! Limelight’s filings disclosed that less than 20 customers comprised 70+% of its business. Over many years, we saw how Akamai’s delivery business was directly impacted by its “top six internet platform accounts.” As an industry, we have the data to see the “true” size of the CDN market and the expected growth level. The fact that many want to ignore the numbers and make up their own is what sets false expectations, leading to failure. A handful of customers comprise the largest percentage of overall revenue for all CDN vendors. A shift in strategy by any of them and vendors are impacted, more often than not, negatively.

Regarding capacity, there is not a shortage. Vendors are willing to pay to build out more capacity if customers will pay a fair price, which they are willing to do. But it must be built out realistically. Large customers still have Akamai, Amazon, Fastly, and CDN77 as options, and within specific geographic regions, other CDN vendors are strong in those locations. Some of the largest companies have also supplemented their delivery with DIY and first-party CDN capabilities, with a few other large content owners currently looking at that as an option. 4K quality video is not growing much as a percentage of total bits delivered by CDNs, and content owners optimizing their encoding has, in many cases, lowered their total bit delivery year-over-year.

The economics of the CDN business have not changed, and every vendor has been trying to replicate what Akamai has done. Akamai offers a delivery service at a scale that they routinely disclose is profitable. They achieved this by diversifying their business from only offering delivery services to other non-CDN services, like security, with higher margins. This allows them to generate cash to re-invest in the business and build more scale while lowering costs. Amazon has done the same thing with its CloudFront delivery business, to the tune of more than $1.1 billion in revenue this year (I’m not disclosing the source of the number), within a larger AWS business that will do over $110 billion in revenue in 2024. The economics of the CDN business have never changed over the past thirty years, only the vendors’ execution in the industry.

In regulatory filings (two 8-Ks and one 10-Q), more details have emerged in Bending Spoons plans to acquire Brightcove, including some terms for employees who stay on with the new company, the number of aggregate shares of company common stock tied to RSU awards, the exact number of Brightcove employees, a disclosure of a “material weakness in internal control over financial reporting,” and other company details. I have highlighted some of the numbers below, and Mark Donnigan and I recorded a special podcast discussing the proposed Brightcove acquisition, which you can listen to here.

• As of Sept 30, 2024, Brightcove had 621 employees, not 720 like multiple people keep reporting
• If the deal is not completed by August 24, 2025, Brightcove would have to pay $7.8M in a termination charge
• Brightcove’s CEO, CFO, CLO all have been given a $200K bonus to stay on with the Company or one of its subsidiaries through the Closing
• Employees who stay with the new entity cannot have their salary or base hourly rate “reduced by more than 10%” for 12 months.
• Brightcove disclosed a “material weakness in internal control over financial reporting.” Fortunately, Brightcove says the material weakness “did not result in any material misstatements in our financial statements or disclosures, and there were no changes to previously released financial results.”
• Brightcove has a minimum commitment of $6.6 million over two years for content delivery network services, hosting and other support services.
• On March 20, 2023, Brightcove granted 1,563,688 premium-priced options to some of its employees under its 2021 Stock Incentive Plan. The options have a strike price of $7.00 and vest in equal installments over three years following March 10, 2023.
• An aggregate of 1,904,276 shares of Brightcove’s common stock were subject to outstanding company stock options, and an aggregate of 7,579,892 shares of company common stock were subject to outstanding company RSU awards.
• While not in the filing, I find a record of 53 patents granted to Brightcove. However, in Q1, the company sold an unknown number of its patents to Adeia for $6.0 million. I don’t know how many patents Brightcove currently owns.
• At the end of Q3, Brightcove had 1,923 premium customers, which was slightly down YoY. Outside of premium customers, Brightcove had 469 “starter” customers, paying $350 monthly, which was slightly down in Q3 YoY.

Further details on the deal can be found in this blog post.