The New Playbook for Streaming Growth: Compete Less, Collaborate More
Video Summary
The streaming industry is no longer defined only by competition for subscribers. Increasingly, rival platforms are forming alliances that make it easier for consumers to subscribe to multiple services within a single interface. But how do these collaborations reshape competition?
In their 2025 paper published in the Journal of Marketing Research, Professors Abhinav Uppal, Manish Gangwar, and Nanda Kumar examine how “multi-homing alliances” between competing OTT platforms influence pricing, profitability, and consumer welfare.
Using a game-theoretic model, the research analyzes a market where consumers may subscribe to more than one platform, and where alliances reduce the friction of managing multiple subscriptions. The findings reveal a nuanced outcome: the impact of collaboration depends critically on how differentiated the platforms’ content offerings are.
When partnered platforms offer relatively similar content, alliances soften price competition. Firms charge higher prices, profits increase, and even a third platform that does not join the alliance may benefit. Surprisingly, consumers still gain due to improved convenience and integrated viewing experiences.
However, when partnered platforms offer highly differentiated content, the outcome reverses. Competition intensifies, prices fall, and profits decline. Yet consumer surplus continues to rise because viewers enjoy greater flexibility and expanded content access.
As streaming markets mature and fragmentation increases, competitive advantage may increasingly stem not from exclusive ownership, but from strategically structured collaboration.
Authored by ISB Editorial