The streaming service will also offer action titles such as Rush, Rambo, and Highlander, and comedies that include Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa and Four Lions. Other titles include Legend, Tinker Tailor Solider Spy, The Imitation Game and Non-Stop. Additionally, Premium subscribers will have access to a catalogue of TV series that includes Hannibal, Years and Years and All the Way Up.

Laura Franses, Director of Content Partnerships, Streaming, ITV, says: “We are thrilled to announce our partnership with STUDIOCANAL PRESENTS. This fantastic collection of films and television series is the perfect addition to ITVX Premium, where subscribers can browse quality content ad-free to their hearts’ content.”

The research company also forecasts that SVOD will be the main driver of OTT revenues in the region reaching $3.82B in 2028, up from $2.03B in 2022. MENA AVOD revenues will climb to $1.55B by 2028 – up from $1B in 2022. From that total, Turkey will contribute 62% of AVOD revenues, with Israel and Saudi Arabia contributing 11% and 10% each, respectively.

Simon Murray, Principal Analyst at Digital TV Research, says: “We forecast 42 million SVOD subscriptions by 2028, double from 21 million at end-2022. Netflix will have 11 million subscribers by 2028. Disney+ started in the Arabic countries, Israel and Turkey in 2022 – with 7.22 million subscribers expected by 2028.”

Viaplay has said the content concept is focused on markets where local partners can benefit from its content pipeline. Alongside Crave in Canada, Viaplay Select has launched on WOWOW in Japan and SBS in Australia. It has also launched on CINDIE in nine Latin American markets and Pickbox NOW in seven countries in Eastern Europe. Viaplay will rollout its own streaming service in Canada in early 2023.

Nordic noir dramas which will be available on Crave include Face to Face, Furia, The Machinery and Partisan. Viaplay Select titles in the Young Adult genre include Delete Me, Harmonica and Love Me, and third-party features include The Emigrants, I am Zlatan and Tigers.

Vanda Rapti, Viaplay Group Chief Commercial Officer, North America & Viaplay Select, says: “This partnership with Crave gives Canadian audiences a great taste of what Viaplay is all about, ahead of our direct-to-consumer launch. Viaplay is the home of premium European storytelling that has both style and substance. In less than a year, Viaplay Select has already brought the best of Viaplay to 19 countries, and more are on the way in 2023.”

Justin Stockman, Vice President, Content Development and Programming, Bell Media (Crave’s parent company): “We’re delighted to offer Crave subscribers even more premium programming to explore. Viaplay’s original content is renowned around the world, and we’re pleased to join forces with Viaplay Group to introduce their uniquely gripping series and films to the Canadian market.”

The first two live football broadcasts on the channel were Paris Saint Germain vs Strasbourg which took place on December 28^th, and Valladolid vs Real Madrid which took place on December 30^th.

This is DAZN’s second FAST channel in Germany. Last month, the sports streamer launched its first FAST channel with German IPTV platform waipu.tv

Richard Jakeman, European Head of Business Development – Smart TV, Mobile & Gaming, Samsung Electronics, comments: “This is an exciting evolution of our continued relationship with DAZN, which has completely disrupted the sports streaming market in Europe by providing innovative and ground-breaking new ways for fans to watch premium sports content. Being able to offer free to watch, live football matches to Samsung TV Plus users in Germany reflects Samsung’s commitment to redefining the FAST landscape in Europe. Samsung and DAZN share a vision to find new ways to serve the best sports content to viewers in ways that work for them, and it’s fantastic that our partnership continues to grow.”

Alice Mascia, CEO of DAZN in the DACH region, says: “We are very excited to launch DAZN FAST+ together with Samsung in Germany. Samsung TV Plus is a popular and growing platform and thanks to our cooperation, even more fans can now enjoy sports from the strong DAZN programme catalogue. Our collaboration with Samsung once again demonstrates our role as an innovator in the sports industry by strengthening DAZN’s position as a one-stop shop for all sports.”

Hisense is the world’s second-largest TV brand by volume share of shipments. Launched in 2019, the company’s VIDAA platform is available in all Hisense markets and supports a broad range of Smart TV apps and technologies.

Philip Wågnert, Chief Technology & Product Officer, Viaplay Group, says: “Viaplay is a unique service, and we want our compelling line-up of premium Viaplay Originals, the world’s best live sports and much more to be easily available on every relevant platform. Teaming up with VIDAA will expand our reach and enable even more viewers, including in our upcoming North American markets, to experience Viaplay for themselves.”

Nick Ruczaj, Vice President of Content, VIDAA: “This is a very exciting opportunity for both parties as well as for streaming enthusiasts. At VIDAA, we believe in making streaming services accessible and affordable to a diverse demographic, and partnering with a leading industry player that offers a wide array of multinational content such as Viaplay is an essential part of that process.”

Comcast and Charter Communications have announced that their streaming joint venture will be branded Xumo. The companies have said the move will evolve the brand from a FAST service to an “entire entertainment ecosystem” which includes streaming devices, content and a streaming service.

Flex – the 4K streaming device Comcast licensed to the joint venture – will become Xumo Stream Box while Comcast’s Smart TV platform, XClass TV, will be called Xumo TV. According to the companies, users will be able to find their favourite streaming content easily through voice search and a “world-class” user interface.

Both Xumo Stream Box and Xumo TV will continue to be powered by Comcast, and Xumo will go-to-market with its first branded devices in late 2023 (distributed by Comcast, Charter and Walmart, with additional distributors still to be announced).

Xumo’s FAST service – which currently has hundreds of linear channels and on-demand option – will be rebranded Xumo Play. Xumo devices will comes with Xumo Play, giving customers access to the free content offering, and the service will continue to be available as an app on other platforms.

Marcien Jenckes, President, Xumo says: “Since 2011, the Xumo brand has connected with millions of customers across the country, establishing itself as a leader in the free ad-supported TV industry for the innovative ways it delivers content to its users.

“The new Xumo will bring industry leading streaming and aggregation technology nationwide through its expanding content, product line up, and retailer relationships.”

The company says the decline is driven in “almost equal part by a decrease in households taking out new subscriptions and an increase in those cancelling services.”

38% of those cancelling services cited “wanting to save money” as their main reason, up significantly from the same period last year, when only 24% cited cost-saving as their main reason. Despite this, the proportion of consumers citing cost-saving fell by two percentage points quarter-on-quarter.

Kantar also revealed that the largest drop in penetration is seen in the youngest households, with under 24s seeing SVOD penetration decline by 2.6 percentage points. For 55-64 year olds, SVOD market decline was only 0.5 percentage points quarter-on-quarter.

Dominic Sunnebo, Global Insight Director, Kantar, Worldpanel Division, said: “In Q2, we observed how British consumers continued to cancel subscriptions across the board. In terms of the TV streaming market, the decline in subscriptions is being driven largely by younger ages. Although, it is worth noting that this group often have a wider variety of entertainment sources, including BBC iPlayer and free services such as TikTok, suggesting that this age is still interested in viewing TV streaming, just for a lower cost.”

Carl Furgusson, Head of Portfolio Development at MediaKind Global, gives an example: “We had this idea to enable different monetisation models. For example, under a certain model viewers could be allowed to watch a sports game for free until the first goal is scored. As soon as the first goal is scored, they get notified that the free viewing period is up and that, in 30 seconds they will no longer have access to the stream. They can be presented an option that says ‘press here now to buy access to the rest of the game.’”

He notes that this is partly achieved through a live synchronisation mechanism the company added to MK Engage, which allows metadata flags to be added the stream at the encoding stage, which can then be surfaced through the SDK and into the streaming apps.

He elaborated: “For example, let’s say a goal has just been scored in a football match that is being streamed. We can insert a tag saying ‘hey a goal has been scored now’ and client functionality can then take that and say ‘I’m going enable a pay-after-first goal type model and surface all of the transactions.”

According to Furgusson, the live video synchronisation feature can allow service providers to offer novel custom experiences to viewers, particularly in the domain of sports. By leveraging the feature, streamers can include information on-screen such as the name of the player that has possession of the ball at any given moment in a football match. Another application could be if a viewer wanted to watch several football matches simultaneously, service providers could highlight which game they should be paying attention to based on something important having just occurred (a goal being scored for example).

MediaKind says this feature also allows venues showing live games, such as betting shops, bars, and stadiums, to experience the same goal at the same moment in time, regardless of latency in the feed or the device or platform being used.

Furgusson believes the inclusion of live synchronisation in MK Engage represents a significant advance in the technology. He remarked: “Before now either you couldn’t do it or you would have to rely on some out-of-bound signaling. You would have had to get your app talking to some other service to get it fed with data or metadata.

“By putting it inside the video encoded stream as metadata, you’ve got a secure delivery mechanism to deliver that to all the devices that the app is on without relying on out-of-bound connections to other systems.”

Baskar Subramanian, Co-founder and CEO, said that one significant benefit of the platform is that it enables OTT channels to  stream live sports, and then spin those channels down after the event has ended, without accruing many of the operational costs associated with broadcasting live sports.

He remarked: “As live sports continues its migration to OTT services, one of the most interesting use-cases is people only wanting to run the sports event when it’s live – so unlike traditional TV channels, which are 24/7. In previous years and even today, a lot of companies will invest heavily in hardware while running these sports events. Lets say you were broadcasting a 90 minute football match – you spin up the whole system, broadcast the event, and then spin it down. But you still have the hardware sitting in your office.”

Subramanian argued that Amagi CLOUDPORT allows service providers to avoid these operational and hardware costs. He elaborated: “It is a simple software project.  The system is spun up and spun down after the 90 minute match is completed, and so you don’t need to pay for anything further than those 90 minutes. This dramatically increases efficiencies from a live sports standpoint.”

Beyond live sports, Subramanian said that CLOUDPORT can enable content creators to rapidly originate new channels in the OTT and FAST space. He remarked: “If I want to create or spin up a new channel, the process can sometimes take six to eight months. Working with us it can take only two weeks, and if the content is ready, only two hours.”

One aspect of the solution that Subramanian believes is particularly important to service providers, is that it provides a unified operational environment for ingesting media, scheduling and playout.

He said: “Say I create a live sports event today and I want to take it to my OTT platforms and multiple other distribution platforms – satellite, cable, etc. – all through one operational environment. Previously there may have been two different workflows and two different teams working on it.

“Amagi provides a ‘single experience’ capability. What this means is that what viewers see on the screen can be controlled independently of whether it’s being delivered to a broadcast, satellite or an OTT service. Everything is managed by Amagi on the backend – you just need to worry about the content creation process.”

Conviva’s census-level, streaming analytics pipeline standardises, cleanses and normalises streaming data in real-time to “deliver accurate and contextual data at scale.” 605 believes that standardising publisher first-party streaming data at scale for its cross-platform measurement reporting, will enable higher levels of analysis and data actionability.

Kristin Dolan, CEO of 605, said: “For too long measurement in the U.S. has been fragmented and incapable of giving either the sell-side or the buy-side a consistent view of ad and content consumption in U.S. households. Through our collaboration with Conviva we will provide programmers, brands and agencies with timely and meaningful metrics to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their content and advertising.”

Marc Goldstein, Head of Strategic Partnerships at Conviva, commented: “The industry and leading publishers worldwide have come to expect accurate and contextualized streaming data, at Internet scale, from Conviva. As a streaming analytics company, we’re focused on helping anyone who wants to standardize their data and make it actionable in real time. This agreement with 605 will accelerate cross-platform video measurement initiatives, making available real-time streaming analytics directly to advertising ecosystem measurement and attribution partners.”