Walmart delved into the streaming services space and eventually chose Paramount Plus as its partner to tie into its Walmart Plus subscription service. The company hopes all of these pluses will help it compete with Amazon, its biggest competitor in the “everything under the sun shipped direct to the customer’s home” division.
Rumors of a possible partnership first surfaced last week when the New York Times reported that Walmart was eyeing Paramount, Comcast and Disney as possible partners. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this morning that a deal had been signed between Walmart and Paramount. A press release from Walmart followed shortly thereafter, confirming the news and announcing that Walmart Plus subscribers would receive the “Essential” tier of Paramount Plus for free.
That means advertising, but it also means an added value of $4.99 per month for Walmart Plus, which costs $12.95 per month. While Paramount Plus isn’t quite in the same league as Disney and Netflix, the streaming service formerly called CBS All Access has accumulated a decent number of hits, including Halo, The Good Fight, Evil, a whole Star Trek mess Shows and shows from the burgeoning Yellowstone film universe (Yellowstone itself is exclusive to Peacock). Paramount Plus will also be home to Top Gun Maverick, the sixth-highest-grossing film of all time, when it goes to streaming later this year.
That’s a healthy library of content for the service, and partnering with Walmart should help both companies compete better with Amazon, the largest mail order company in the US and technically one of the biggest streamers in the world. Earlier this year it claimed to have over 200 million Amazon Prime subscribers watching content. That compares to Netflix’s 220 million claims and Disney’s 221 million claims. Paramount now has more than 56 million subscribers. Walmart hasn’t revealed how many subscribers it had for Plus, but at least one estimate puts it at an achingly low 32 million subscribers who pay for priority access to PS5s or optional perks like grocery delivery straight to the fridge.
It’ll need a few more if it hopes to fend off Amazon. Perhaps there is synergy between a service offering cheaper gas and the Yellowstone spin-off 1883.