The Great Rebundling
The answer to the media industry’s cord-cutting problem lies with the strategy that made the business successful in the first place: the bundle.
With the cable industry declining 10% year-over-year and streaming still falling short of proving itself as a consistently lucrative solution, premium content creators may need to look backward—with a modern twist—to move forward. This piece outlines a brief history of the cable bundle and builds a case for why the industry should more aggressively explore streaming bundle strategies. As part of this analysis, Navigate surveyed NBA fans and a general population sample to gauge interest in two fictional streaming bundle concepts: NBA Power Bundle and Complete Entertainment Essentials. Key findings from these surveys are highlighted in the sections that follow.
The Power of the Cable Bundle:
With the advent of cable, consumers had a one-stop shop for video content from hundreds of channels for a monthly price. Networks were compensated on a per-subscriber basis by the operators, regardless of viewership, and those costs were passed onto the consumers. With no other competition in the living room, and simplicity in scale of distribution, the at-home entertainment industry exploded beyond radio and newspapers. Networks used their newfound revenues to make niche IP into national brands. At its peak in 2012, cable reached around 100M homes in the U.S.
At a high level, the cable bundle worked for consumers because:
- The User Experience (UX) was simple
- Programming was vast and diverse
- The billing happened in one place
- Very limited video competition
Cord-Cutting & Unbundling:
Streaming emerged and revolutionized on-demand viewing, leading to an explosion of content across numerous (often free) platforms. The lines between premium (Hollywood) and non-premium content (user-generated on YouTube) blurred and users loved the ability to sign up for streaming services a la carte with a vast library of content and premium originals (see House of Cards on Netflix in 2013). Long gone were the days of cable and satellite companies touting one thousand plus cable channels to give consumers access to any content that could exist at their fingertips. Consumers only want to pay for what they watch. Today, the cable universe has now shrunk to a humble 60M homes (from 100M+). Trends show continued declines at 10% yoy, even with innovative digital cable bundles like YouTube TV stemming overall declines.
The traditional cable bundle no longer works for consumers because:
- With cable prices so high, consumers only want to pay for what they watch
- Cheaper alternatives such as YouTube and Netflix exist
- Innovation in UX has trailed streaming
- Tent-pole content is migrating to streaming (e.g., NFL on Prime Video)
The decline has occurred as major media companies raced to market in the streaming wars, with many using their cable revenues to subsidize the costs of launching their own direct-to-consumer (DTC) services (e.g., Disney+, Paramount+, HBO Max, Peacock) to meet the consumers where they are at the risk of cannibalizing their own cable revenues.
The Streaming Arms Race / Streaming Wars:
In just five years or so, the traditional media companies have amassed 30-50M+ subscribers for each of their respective streaming services in the U.S. With FOX’s announcement of FOX One, every major media company has now officially entered the DTC market.
Netflix and Prime Video are the leaders with 85M+ and 75M+ plus each.
Today, the video marketplace is as fragmented as ever, and content migration has driven the average cable consumers (mainly sports + general entertainment fans) to spend north of $185/month for cable and a handful of streaming subscriptions. This amount doesn’t include the monthly internet bill, which is often heavily discounted when bundled with a cable package by the provider.
Consumers must navigate multiple apps, different user experiences (UX), device limitations, password sharing, and password resets. In addition, internet providers may reduce download speeds (also known as throttling) if you are not on the most premium data plan. Consumers are looking at their wallets and scrutinizing the price-value of their entertainment choices more closely.
The rapid growth seen in the early 2020s has slowed with increased subscriber churn.
Subscription pausing is becoming common, where users cycle in and out of services instead of keeping multiple subscriptions at once. (WSJ)
According to Antenna, the monthly median percentage of premium streaming subscribers who reactivated canceled services within 12 months rose to 34.2% in the first nine months of 2024, up from 29.8% in 2022.
While streaming opens the door for media companies to engage directly with consumers in ways that weren’t possible before—such as targeted marketing and direct monetization—this model lacks the built-in subsidies of traditional cable, where non-viewers helped cover the cost of content. As a result, even if consumers are spending less overall than they did for cable, they often feel like they’re paying more for individual shows or platforms. Before, media companies only had to worry about creating content, selling ads and delivering a video feed. Streaming adds broader responsibility in marketing the service, acquiring subscribers, keeping subscribers, and operating the app.
- Subscriber Acquisition Costs vary by service, but can range from an estimated $30-$150+ per subscriber
- Subscriber Retention Costs range from $5-$20 per subscriber annually
- In the U.S., churn rates average between 5-10% per month
Streaming is an expensive and involved endeavor. After a period of fast-paced competition (with large content spends and promotional pricing), the industry has begun crawling to correct itself and work together to give consumers more options.
The Great Rebundling:
In response to the market, cable companies, media companies, and even non-media companies have jumped in with early takes at reimagining the bundle to provide consumers with some cost savings, broader content offerings, and easier billing options.
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- Cable companies such as Comcast and DirecTV have successfully negotiated some packaging flexibility to provide skinnier bundles of networks on their platforms though they are still run $70/month and are missing key sports networks.
- Charter (aka Spectrum) “Entitlements” provides an incentive to stay with the cable bundle by offering complimentary base tier subscriptions to associated SVOD services (e.g., Disney+, HBO Max, Peacock) for video package subscribers.
- This program gives you the best of both cable and streaming from participating networks and integrates billing with Charter.
- The reporting has shown strong early results for both Charter and its streaming partners.
- Charter video customer declined 5% in the last 12 months ending in Q2 ’25 bucking the 10% industry average.
- Media companies have either bundled their own services or even partnered with competitors to bundle their streaming services.
- Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu
- Disney Bundle (D+, ESPN+, Hulu)
- Comcast “Stream Saver” Bundle (Peacock, Apple TV+, Netflix)
- Non-Media Retail/Media crossover bundles
- The telco operators in the U.S. have long championed the “It’s On Us” partnerships such as Disney Bundle with Verizon and MLB.TV with T-Mobile, but other industries are also jumping into the mix
- Walmart+ and Paramount+
- InstaCart+ and Peacock
- What’s Next?
- True Aggregation / Integration:
- While today’s streaming bundles have improved consumer experience with regards to billing and subscription costs, the next step will be the aggregation of content experiences.
- It’s a no-brainer for media companies to unify their own apps (see Disney+, ESPN, and Hulu). However, optimal integration for consumers will be at the cross-company level.
- Which platforms may be best positioned to offer these integrations? The ones with the biggest reach and advanced technology: Amazon (Prime Video Channels) and YouTube (Primetime Channels) through their integrated channel stores. Darkhorse candidates are the media device manufacturers and operating systems such as Roku, Apple, and connected TVs (e.g., Samsung, LG, VIZIO). In fact, Apple TV+ signups surged from 1.44M to 3M after it became available on Prime Video.
- True Aggregation / Integration:
- Bundles Beyond Video Content
- Music, video games, social media, and audiobooks/podcasts, have also innovated over the last two decades and have taken more mindshare from TV with many adopting subscription models.
- Combining offerings and payments has the potential to expand audiences, further reduce churn for services involved, or even increase positive subscriber sentiment.
- Example: Hulu and Spotify offer a $5.99/month bundle for college students which includes Spotify Premium and Hulu (w/ ads). Spotify controls billing.
- Consumer Choice Bundling
- Too much choice has gotten us to where we are today. A common adage is “Choice is cherished but choosing is a chore.” Can media companies provide effective tools to help consumers create their own bundles at savings, or even have AI assist along the way?
Our Consumer Study
To further test consumer demand for streaming bundles, Navigate surveyed 600 Gen Pop and 600 NBA Fans on two bespoke streaming bundle concepts. Respondents were screened based on demographics (e.g., age, gender, fandom, location), media habits (e.g., linear vs. streaming), and subscription access (via bundles, password-sharing, direct subscriptions). They were then each taken through a fictional bundle concept (see below) and asked to evaluate the offerings. For clarity, consumers were only surveyed about integrated billing/pricing and packaging, and not about integrated content experiences. We sought to give media companies and properties clarity when it comes to bundle pricing strategy, direct-to-consumer streaming, packaging analysis, and content aggregation.
Hypothetical #1 – NBA Power Bundle
Hypothetical #2 – “Complete” Entertainment Essentials
6 Key Takeaways
1) Live TV is still being accessed by around half of Gen Pop, nearly all have access to at least one major streaming platform, and more than half subscribe to at least one currently available streaming bundle.
2) Traditional cable and satellite subscriptions are still present but are no longer dominant (making up 45% for Gen Pop). Instead, many respondents are accessing live TV either through streaming (39%), free via antenna (25%), or shared subscriptions (12%).
3) Interest was notably higher for the NBA Power bundle concept shared with NBA fans than interest in the Entertainment Essentials bundle among the general population. This may indicate that identity-based media bundles and sports streaming bundles specifically, may have greater market potential than one-size-fits-all entertainment packages.
4) Consumers are price-sensitive, and presenting bundles with visible, quantifiable discounts boosts perceived value and likelihood of trial.
- After being given the unbundled value of the Complete Entertainment Bundle, Gen Pop said they’d be willing to pay an average of approximately $67, less than half of its full unbundled value of $137.
- NBA Fans are more willing to pay closer to full price, saying they’d pay an average of $37 monthly for the NBA Power Bundle, which has a full unbundled value of $51.
- Interest in both bundles increased noticeably when shifting from a 15% to a 30% discount off of the unbundled value.
5) Interest in media bundles is driven by a balance of simplicity and variety; thus, effective messaging should focus on convenience and value consideration.
6) Though interest in the proposed bundles was incredibly high, some respondents saw the bundles as redundant or inflexible, highlighting the need to combat the perception that bundling is a one-size-fits-all model.
What’s next?
Bundling has re-emerged as a powerful strategy for driving both subscriber acquisition and retention in the streaming era. By easing consumer pain points—like rising costs and fragmented billing—it enhances the perceived value of participating services, and increases demand for streaming bundles. However, user experience fragmentation remains a challenge, and without continuous innovation or fresh, must-have content, the streaming industry risks repeating the very pitfalls that led to the decline of the traditional cable bundle. To succeed, today’s bundles must evolve beyond convenience and become indispensable.
