Patreon Acquires Livestreaming Platform Moment in Push for Non-Subscription Offerings

As part of its push to drive both consumer engagement and creator adoption outside of its membership offerings, Patreon has acquired livestreaming events company Moment.

The monetization platform, which enables creators to offer paid subscriptions for their content, among other things, has purchased the startup, which powers ticketed virtual access to live events, for an undisclosed amount, per a Patreon announcement on Tuesday (Oct. 17).

“Patreon’s mission has always been to help creators take control over their work, deepen connections with their most passionate fans, and build successful, sustainable businesses,” Patreon co-founder and CEO Jack Conte said in a statement. “On the heels of releasing our new brand identity, mobile app, and a suite of creator tools, joining forces with Moment will further strengthen Patreon’s offerings for creators.”

Moment, for its part, has platformed events from many high-profile figures including Justin Bieber, Tame Impala and the Pod Save America team.

This acquisition comes as part of Patreon’s push to diversify beyond membership models, following the company’s debut earlier this month of new features and a new app design, which included rolling out the option for creators to sell one-off videos, audio pieces and downloads outside of subscriptions as well as to offer access to free content.

The move comes months after the company made headlines for creators on the platform’s payment challenges and about a year after the company’s widespread layoffs in the face of its financial difficulties.

Indeed, most consumers are not looking to add more subscriptions to their monthly bills. Rather, in the face of ongoing financial pressures, many are cutting back. PYMNTS Intelligence’s report “Subscription Commerce Readiness Report: The Loyalty Factor,” created in collaboration with sticky.io, which is based on a survey of more than 2,000 U.S. consumers with retail product subscriptions, found that the average number of retail subscriptions per subscriber was down to 2.6 as of April, the lowest number on record since February 2021.

Plus, when consumers cut back on monthly payments, content subscriptions are the first to go, according to the study “The One-Stop Bill Pay Playbook: Drivers of Consumers’ Bill Payment Priorities,” a PYMNTS Intelligence and Mastercard collaboration, which drew from a survey of more than 2,100 consumers in December.

The results revealed that 30% of digital media subscribers had made at least one partial payment or skipped at least one payment in the previous year, a greater share than said the same of any other kind of subscription. Additionally, the same report indicated that streaming subscriptions are the most likely to be canceled when consumers look to cut down on monthly bills.

In a conversation with PYMNTS’ Karen Webster earlier this year for the J.P. Morgan Payments Series: Global Innovators in Payments, sticky.io CEO Brian Bogosian spoke to how consumers’ expectations of their subscriptions are rising in the face of budget pressures.

“The bar continues to get higher,” Bogosian said. “People’s budgets are getting squeezed. People aren’t spending money frivolously. If they don’t get value, if they don’t get flexibility, if they don’t get incentives to continue, they’ll drop off.”

As such, by focusing on lower-commitment monetization models, Patreon creates the opportunity to drive revenue even as many consumers winnow down their monthly subscriptions.