OTT Video: The future is strategic partnerships
In our recent white paper, Advancing OTT audience capture: How strategic partnerships provide avenues for growth, Magine Pro’s CCO, Luke Boyle, reflects on the industry and highlights the importance of partnerships for new market entrants.
In our recent white paper, Advancing OTT audience capture: How strategic partnerships provide avenues for growth, Magine Pro’s CCO, Luke Boyle, reflects on the industry and highlights the importance of partnerships for new market entrants.They say in business that it is who you know, not what you know. This has never been more true than in the ever more competitive world of OTT. Online video streaming continues to innovate, and those starting out on that journey, as we have seen, can be anyone from traditional broadcasters, production houses, to an operator, a telco, ISP, sports federation, start-up, really anyone and everyone has or is looking at the platform. We at Magine Pro refer to a triangle of success: great content, great tech, and clever marketing. This white paper focuses primarily on the latter.
Traditional marketing remains incredibly important, digital marketing equally so, but evermore relevant is that the success key comes down to strategic partnerships. Partnerships is a very broad term; as you will have read, it can cover everything from aggregator partnerships, content partnerships, and partnerships with those in different market verticals that already have an audience – such as banks, film festivals, e-commerce, and even supermarkets and book clubs.
Many rights deals are now constructed based on partnership revenue share. Indeed our own commercial model with our partners is not dissimilar. It is important, of course, to partner with the correct organisation to achieve your individual and mutual goals. It should be a symbiotic relationship, and in theoretical terms, it is a simple one – there is a hungry audience out there for quality, exclusive, premium, or just ‘interesting’ content. It is just about where to find it, through whom, and without breaking the bank of the respective audience.
So what is the future of partnerships in OTT? The Omdia report tells us that the market is becoming ever more competitive and that viewers have multiple options to buy or view their content with ads. So our advice, in line with theirs, is to look at strategic partnerships to build viewership. And look at partners who already have a route to market, those with an audience, and those that look toward loyalty schemes or branching out. The reverse is also true; if you have a great OTT service, look to enhance that with supplementary content or other brands to enable stickiness and devotion to your services.
Here at Magine Pro, we believe that content is king and continue to work with our multiple clients on the tech that acts as the enabler to great innovative thinking and business disruption. Together we achieve great success.
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You can download our latest white paper, which features Luke Boyle’s reflection now, Advancing OTT audience capture: how strategic partnerships provide avenues for growth. The white paper also includes original research by Omdia, highlighting why strategic partnerships are key to delivering sufficient online video growth and, specifically, the impact of bundling and aggregation partnerships with the likes of telcos and Pay-TV operators. Insights from Magine Pro partners also feature, as they share their experiences on how partnerships have improved their service discoverability, acquisition and growth.
Learn more about Magine Pro’s flexible OTT solutions and how we can help you build and launch a successful OTT business here. And head to our experience page to check out our partners and case studies.
You can also subscribe to the Magine Pro e-newsletter to stay up-to-date with our latest news, partners, and products, and to find out which industry events we’ll be attending next.
Luke Boyle on OTT & the future of sports broadcasting
Magine Pro’s CCO, Luke Boyle shares his thoughts on the current climate and what he thinks the future has in store for sports OTT.
Magine Pro’s CCO, Luke Boyle shares his thoughts on the current climate and what he thinks the future has in store for sports OTT. Usually, at this time of year, we would be heading back from several international trips to glorious places such as Monaco and Madrid, having attended some of the biggest sports broadcast and OTT conventions in the region. This has not happened. It isn’t that type of year…
Sport stopped. It stopped. This has never happened in my lifetime. But then it came back. The players and athletes, when allowed out of their bubbles, continue to enthral and entertain us. Though this is in very few cases (well done New Zealand!) in front of full or even partial crowds. So how do we, the fans, get to view the trials and tribulations of our favourite icons and teams? The obvious answer is of course via broadcasts, live and on-demand, and more commonly via a subscription or transactional OTT service (I say subscription, as unfortunately, though it is coming, I am yet to see a profitable pure sports AVOD service).
One of the big discussion points of late has been how COVID has disrupted businesses. For the digital media industry, the reality is that it has expedited development. Within the space of six months, we’ve seen perhaps three years of user behaviour and technological innovation. At Magine Pro we’re now seeing a 40% average consumption increase across all our clients over this time, which was forecast over a much longer period.
Viewing habits have also been evolving. The younger generation doesn’t know what an EPG is. Outside of live events (which maintain their value) sport is no longer about sitting down on a Wednesday evening or Saturday afternoon and seeing what is on the sports channels. It is now about cleverly curated content, be it highlights, lifestyle content, archive footage, best-ofs etc allowing the fan to fully immerse and lose themselves building extreme fan affinity to players and teams alike. None so passionate as sports fans – let’s give them what they want!
One other thing that many people ask me, is sports OTT going to aggregate again? The simple answer is, yes. But it won’t be on a domestic basis. What I think will emerge, as DAZN, Eleven, Amazon, Facebook and of course Google is showing, is the international aggregation of sports content. Viewers anywhere in the world will be able to subscribe or purchase on-demand any sports event, series, league of their choosing. But we are a long way from there yet, although niche sports OTT services continue to thrive.
On a personal note, at Magine Pro we were delighted to announce our new agreement with Endorphin and the Croatian Football Federation a few months ago. Magine Pro will be providing the exclusive end-to-end OTT solution, enabling fans both domestically and internationally to view one of the fastest-growing leagues on the planet, live and on-demand. Read more about the agreement here.
You can also check out some insightful thoughts from our VP of Engineering, Robert Olsson on the technical challenges of surfacing live sports content, and how we have solved them here. Our Director of Marketing also highlights the key features of a successful sports OTT service here.
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To find out more about our OTT platform and how we enable our partners to deliver live sporting events, linear and VOD content to audiences around the world head here. On our experience page, you can find out more about our partners and the OTT services they operate.
Get in touch with us if you would like to discuss how we can help you launch a successful sports OTT service or to demo our services.
You can also subscribe to the Magine Pro e-newsletter and/or follow us on LinkedIn to stay up-to-date with our latest news, partners and products.
Luke Boyle talks about the future with DTVE.
Our CCO, Luke Boyle sits down with Stuart Thomson, editor at Digital TV Europe, to discuss the market opportunity for sports streaming, Magine Pro’s offering and ability to serve second tier sports federations in particular through its technology, speed of service and direct to consumer background.
Luke Boyle joined Magine Pro as CCO in August this year. Ex-Neulion SVP, Boyle, brings with him broad experience from the OTT and sports media sectors, and will be responsible for all commercial activities for Magine Pro’s OTT solutions and managed services. Prior to joining Magine, Boyle led successful business development activities across EMEA and APAC at Neulion, now Endeavor Streaming, and has held senior positions in many sports, media and tech companies over his 25 year career.
“I couldn’t be more delighted to join at this exciting stage in Magine’s development. With the team, technology and operational capabilities at our disposal I am confident that we will achieve great success with our partners, both current and future.” says Boyle.
Boyle’s experience and deep market expertise fit perfectly into Magine’s new b2b strategy. “His experience of OTT and the sports market, combined with great executive skills, bring a great deal of value to our partners” says Magine’s newly appointed CEO Matthew Wilkinson who will take over the position from previous incumbent, Ambuj Goyal. Wilkinson has a background in Ericsson where he held different management positions in Europe and Australia.
Watch the interview below and get in touch today to book your own meeting with Luke or the rest of the team at Magine Pro.