U.S. studios and everyone else with a show to peddle have a new best friend forever in Southeast Asia. Actually, call that a whole lot of new BFFs as OTT platforms prepare for battle. And that’s not even counting the rash of country-specific domestic players...
Malaysia-based regional streaming SVOD platform iflix – with US$50 million of new investment – is but one of a seemingly never-ending stream of fresh-and-raring-to-go platforms, hungry for programming, and hell-bent on super-serving Asian viewers with every kind of content and love-you-to-bits customer service.
There’s also PCCW’s Viu, with a freemium model driven by to-die-for Korean titles from all the major Korean studios and a commitment to enticing viewers away from pirate sites.
Then there’s Singtel’s Hooq. Plus Malaysia’s Astro, which launched regional platform Tribe this month not, as others have, with thousands of hours of on-demand content but with five linear channels from third-party suppliers offered as part of Indonesian mobile platform Axiata for about US$2 a month. The five channels are Fox Sports 1, 2 and 3 and two Korean channels – Turner’s Korean entertainment channel Oh!K and CJ E&M’s Channel M. Other countries are on Tribe’s radar.
Is the streaming boom in Asia real or bat-bleep-crazy? Some think both, and that the current madness will settle down to a few superstars driven in equal measure by content and tech savvy, underpinned by the big-bang ability to be bold, innovative and to move fast.
What does the shiny new attention from European juggernaut Sky really mean, for iflix and for the rest of the industry? For starters, Sky’s involvement in iflix is the biggest vote of confidence in the streaming platform since its launch in Malaysia in May 2015 and the Philippines the following month, and gives it the ability to fast-track expansion beyond its current three markets – Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand – and one million members (the number of paying ...
U.S. studios and everyone else with a show to peddle have a new best friend forever in Southeast Asia. Actually, call that a whole lot of new BFFs as OTT platforms prepare for battle. And that’s not even counting the rash of country-specific domestic players...
Malaysia-based regional streaming SVOD platform iflix – with US$50 million of new investment – is but one of a seemingly never-ending stream of fresh-and-raring-to-go platforms, hungry for programming, and hell-bent on super-serving Asian viewers with every kind of content and love-you-to-bits customer service.
There’s also PCCW’s Viu, with a freemium model driven by to-die-for Korean titles from all the major Korean studios and a commitment to enticing viewers away from pirate sites.
Then there’s Singtel’s Hooq. Plus Malaysia’s Astro, which launched regional platform Tribe this month not, as others have, with thousands of hours of on-demand content but with five linear channels from third-party suppliers offered as part of Indonesian mobile platform Axiata for about US$2 a month. The five channels are Fox Sports 1, 2 and 3 and two Korean channels – Turner’s Korean entertainment channel Oh!K and CJ E&M’s Channel M. Other countries are on Tribe’s radar.
Is the streaming boom in Asia real or bat-bleep-crazy? Some think both, and that the current madness will settle down to a few superstars driven in equal measure by content and tech savvy, underpinned by the big-bang ability to be bold, innovative and to move fast.
What does the shiny new attention from European juggernaut Sky really mean, for iflix and for the rest of the industry? For starters, Sky’s involvement in iflix is the biggest vote of confidence in the streaming platform since its launch in Malaysia in May 2015 and the Philippines the following month, and gives it the ability to fast-track expansion beyond its current three markets – Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand – and one million members (the number of paying subscribers has not been disclosed). A launch in Indonesia, mentioned even before Emtek joined the current funding round, is said to be imminent.
More broadly, the new money – particularly from an acknowledged market leader such as Sky – also lends legitimacy to rampant OTT/on-demand ambitions in Asia, with hot-and-cold running wannabe streaming platforms vying for viewers and subs dollars. And it turbo-charges iflix’s already ambitious content acquisitions plans.
One of the consequences of iflix’s fast-track expansion is that the race for talent and digital experience in the region will get even more fierce. iflix is said to be planning to almost double its headcount by the end of the year and other players are scrambling to fast-track their own digital strategies.
The competition for rights will continue to intensify, and it’s anyone’s guess what this does to pricing. Right now, average OTT license fees for new Korean drama titles – a must have on any self-respecting platform in most Asian markets – start at about US$600 and can go as high as US$10,000 an episode. Library drama is much less. Other Asian titles, with some exceptions, go for way less.
There are 1,001 other questions, including: What does it mean for Fox Networks to have sister platform Sky back a rival to its own rumoured OTT ambitions in Asia? No one is saying, but it’s no secret that Fox has for a year or more been on the hunt for content to drive some sort of regional OTT play to add to its India success with Star India’s Hotstar. The answers? Watch this space.
Published on 21 March 2016