Amid tragic conflict in Europe, rising inflation impacting the home, soaring gas prices, and concerning climate behavior, it’s often easy to
Amid tragic conflict in Europe, rising inflation impacting the home, soaring gas prices, and concerning climate behavior, it’s often easy to forget that showbiz can also affect the market.
And with Apple TV+’s ‘CODA’ taking the first-ever Best Picture Oscar for a streaming service, that’s exactly what happened at last night’s 94th Academy Awards.
A shot across the bow!
Everyone has a guilty pleasure movie. Mine is Dennis Dugan’s 1996 comedy caper ‘Happy Gilmore’, where a hockey player and the namesake protagonist, played by a young Adam Sandler, discovers a unique talent for golf and somehow joins the PGA tour.
In the ambiguously named “Tour Championship”, Sandler’s Happy comes up against the brilliantly-named and villainous antagonist, Shooter McGavin. At one point, during a good spell in the deciding match, Happy turns to Shooter and says:
“You know what the pathetic thing is? You’ve been doing this your whole life.”
Do you see what I’m getting at?
Now, I’m not saying that Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) is the protagonist here by any means, nor is Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) the villain, but you cannot deny the delicious irony in Apple, which launched its original streaming service less than two and a half years ago, winning the first-ever Best Picture Oscar over market-leader Netflix, which was a firm favorite with ‘The Power of the Dog’.
For Apple, the win brings a lot of prestige to its service, which has been bulking out with a host of highly-rated original content at just $4.99 per month, while Netflix continues to raise its prices worldwide. Although Apple’s offering is scant in comparison, it does have a deeper chest of cash, a strong brand draw, and can offer lucrative contracts to all of the biggest names in acting.
Throw Best Picture on top of that, and you can see the Big Tech giant taking Apple TV+ up a notch, much to Netflix’s despair. And, it doesn’t help that Disney also nabbed a Best Animated Film Oscar for ‘Encanto’.
Investors may want to watch the streaming space this year for any major shifts in power.