Sprint's parent, SoftBank, may have kicked the tires on Dreamworks Animation but has decided instead to invest in Legendary Entertainment. Legendary's movie studio has produced notable films like The Hangover and The Dark Night while SoftBank owns wireless carriers in the US and Japan. How SoftBank can leverage this content partnership deal with their businesses will determine how successful this strategy can work. It may not be an easy path.
Exclusivity of content is what enables distribution platforms to compete. In the wired and satellite space, you have the cable companies with telco and DirecTv and Dish. And in the OTT subscription content space, the big guns are Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu Plus. What drives subscription of these services are the breadth and depth of content accessibility and availability. Size matters!
The scope of the deal that SoftBank is doing with Legendary needs to expand greatly to a larger library of content. One or two content output deals will not do it. A bigger strategy is needed, one that SoftBank has yet to reveal.
