Discovery Networks International is launching OTT video services throughout Europe. Its top executives explain how the channel operator will win streaming customers in big numbers, as it starts on its ‘March to a Million’.
When TBI was the first to report in early June that Discovery Communications was making a concerted effort in OTT in Europe with a cluster of new Dplay-branded platform launches, there was surprise in some quarters that a company so invested in traditional TV (and so protective of its rights) would dive so deeply into streaming.
The SVOD and AVOD play is, however, essentially an extension of Discovery’s diversification strategy. Having been a pay TV specialist for decades, it made an aggressive free-to-air play with the US$1.7 billion deal for European broadcaster SBS in 2012, though its international FTA strategy was already underway at that point.
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