Brodie Incremental · Subscriber Advisory

Subscriber economics, improved one decision at a time.

An advisory practice for broadcasters, streamers and sports OTT operators. Small changes, consistently made, compounded into measurable subscriber growth — and the working tools to find them, run them, and prove them.

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The thesis

Most subscriber businesses don't need transforming. They need improving.

Big programmes promise step-change. They rarely deliver it — and when they do, the disruption costs more than the lift. The actual economics of a subscriber base are governed by small, persistent margins: fractions of a percent on churn, a few pounds on ARPU, a couple of points on conversion.

Done consistently, those small improvements compound into the kind of growth transformation programmes promise but rarely produce.

— The Brodie Incremental Position
The method

Find. Test. Compound.

A disciplined, evidence-led loop for finding the small improvements that move the numbers — and proving they did.

01 / FIND

Where the real margins hide

Cohort economics, churn attribution, funnel diagnostics. The unglamorous analytical work that surfaces the small, high-leverage interventions other consultancies miss.

02 / TEST

Designed to prove a lift

Every recommendation comes with a test design. Hypothesis, intervention, control, success criteria. No untested opinions; no untested deliverables.

03 / MEASURE

Attributed, not assumed

Lift is measured against a defensible baseline. Where attribution is hard, we say so. Where it isn't, we prove it — and put the number in the deck.

04 / COMPOUND

Layer, repeat, accrue

One improvement does little. Twelve, layered over eighteen months, materially changes the LTV picture. The discipline is in the repetition.

The compounding maths

Small numbers, relentlessly applied.

The reason this discipline is hard is that the wins look small. A 40-basis-point monthly churn reduction. A 2% conversion lift. A £0.80 ARPU uplift on a single tier.

Each of those, in isolation, sounds modest enough to ignore. Stacked across a subscriber base of one million, sustained for twenty-four months, they compound into an eight-figure improvement in book value.

That is the entire commercial case for incremental work. Done consistently, it out-delivers the transformation programme — at a fraction of the cost and risk.

Illustrative — 1M-subscriber base, 24 months
Monthly churn: -40bps
+£4.2M
Conversion: +2%
+£2.8M
ARPU: +£0.80
+£3.6M
Reactivation: +1.5%
+£1.4M
Compounded LTV uplift
£12M+

Indicative model only. Actual outcomes depend on base metrics, segment mix, and intervention fidelity. We size to your data.

Ready reckoner

Your numbers. Compounded.

Three numbers from your business. A view of what the incremental approach would mean for it. The model is conservative — it uses targets we'd typically commit to in a first engagement, not best-case scenarios.

Your business
The base you're working with today
Average revenue per subscriber, per month
£
% of subscribers cancelling each month
%

The improvement targets below are what a typical first-engagement Brodie Incremental programme would commit to. Conservative on purpose.

Churn reduction−10% relative
ARPU uplift+5%
Reactivation lift+1.5% of churned
Modelled period36 months
Discount rateNil (gross)
Compounded 3-year revenue uplift
£
The cumulative additional revenue, over 36 months, from layering modest incremental improvements onto your existing subscriber economics.
Monthly revenue · current path vs. incremental path
CURRENT INCREMENTAL
From churn
£—
Revenue retained by holding subscribers longer
From ARPU
£—
Revenue added by lifting average monthly value
From reactivation
£—
Revenue recovered by winning back churned subscribers
This is what's typically achievable. The interesting question is what's specifically achievable in your business.
Find out
How this is modelled. The calculator applies the assumed improvements as a linear ramp over the first six months, then compounds the resulting base, ARPU and tenure dynamics across 36 months. Acquisition is held constant at a replacement-only rate to isolate the incremental impact. Real-world outcomes depend on baseline data quality, segment mix, intervention fidelity, and operational factors. This is an indicative model, not a forecast.
The diagnostic deliverable

The Incremental Subscriber Health Scorecard.

The first artefact of every engagement. A single page that shows where the subscriber business is today, where the headroom sits, and which lifecycle area to attack first. Used as the anchor for every decision that follows.

Incremental Subscriber Health Scorecard · Illustrative
— Your Business
Performing poorly Industry standard High performer World leading 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% ACQUISITION ARPU CHURN OVERALL
Today
Achievable
Acquisition · 30 → 70
Material headroom in conversion economics and channel mix. The most accessible early win.
ARPU · 40 → 80
Tier migration, packaging and pricing all underexploited. The highest-NPV opportunity over twelve months.
Churn · 40 → 70
Save-desk and involuntary-churn interventions both unaddressed. Compounding effect on every other metric.
Engagements

Three ways to work together.

Fixed scope. Fixed price. Designed to leave you with something specific, defensible, and useful — independent of further engagement.

01

Subscriber Lifecycle Diagnostic

4 weeks · Fixed fee

A four-week diagnostic that exposes the highest-yield incremental improvements hidden in your subscriber base. Cohort economics, churn attribution, ARPU uplift mapping, and a prioritised 12-month roadmap ranked by NPV and effort.

  • Cohort-level contribution margin by channel, segment and tenure
  • Voluntary, involuntary and silent churn attribution
  • ARPU uplift map ranked by feasibility and impact
  • Board-ready findings deck and executive readout
02

Churn Deep-Dive

3 weeks · Fixed fee

A focused engagement on the incremental interventions across the churn funnel that compound into a materially lower cancel rate. Cohort segmentation, save-desk effectiveness, win-back economics, and a four-quarter tactical playbook.

  • Voluntary, involuntary and silent churn segmentation
  • Save-desk effectiveness audit and intervention economics
  • Win-back and reactivation modelling
  • Tactical playbook for the next four quarters
03

Diligence & Board Advisory

By engagement · Confidential

For private equity firms evaluating subscription-led targets, and boards navigating strategic decisions about their subscriber business. Independent commercial diligence, management plan stress-testing, and discreet advisory grounded in twenty-five years inside the asset class.

  • Commercial diligence on subscription-led targets
  • Management plan and growth model stress-testing
  • Post-deal value creation roadmap support
  • Board-level advisory on lifecycle strategy
Tools · Coming soon

Working prototypes for the operators we work with.

Advisory work is sharper when it ships with instruments. A library of working tools — each one purpose-built to find, run, or measure a specific class of incremental improvement — currently in private preview with selected partners.

For Finance

SLV What-If Simulator

An interactive lens for the CFO. Flex assumptions on churn, ARPU and acquisition cost; watch portfolio LTV reshape in real time.

For Retention

Save Squad Workbench

A focused agent workbench that ranks at-risk subscribers by save-value and serves pre-ranked offers — so retention agents spend their shift talking, not hunting.

For Self-Service

Cancel Deflector

Turns the cancel button into an intelligent retention moment. The same click resolves to dramatically different journeys per subscriber.

About

Stuart Brodie.

For twenty-five years, I have built and managed the subscriber databases behind some of the world's leading broadcasters and streaming platforms — across pay-TV, sports OTT and broadcaster direct-to-consumer services, with engagements spanning Europe, Asia and North America. The work has covered the full lifecycle: from the technical architecture that captures every event a subscriber generates, to the commercial models that turn those events into growth, retention and ARPU.

Brodie Incremental exists because too many subscriber organisations are running locally optimised teams and wondering why the global numbers won't move. The interventions that change that picture are not exotic. They are, mostly, well-understood. What is rare is the combination of technical fluency, commercial judgement and independence required to identify the right ones — and to argue for them credibly in a boardroom.

The practice takes on a small number of engagements each year. Each is scoped to deliver something specific, defensible, and useful long after the engagement ends.

Domains

Pay-TV Sports OTT SVOD & AVOD Broadcaster D2C Subscriber billing CRM & lifecycle marketing Pricing & packaging PE diligence
Selected engagements

The work, anonymised.

Indicative of the practice's analytical approach. Client identities are withheld by mutual confidentiality.

Let's have a conversation.

A thirty-minute call. No deck, no pitch. We talk about what you're seeing in your subscriber numbers and whether there's a useful engagement to build around it.

All enquiries treated in confidence.