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OCS renews HBO exclusives deal

March 16, 2017

From Pascale Paoli-Lebailly in Paris

Orange’s OCS channel has renewed its exclusive first-window pay-TV deal with HBO according to local reports. A joint press conference with Time Warner’s CEO Richard Pleper and the French operator’s CEO Stéphane Richard has been announced for next week.

The current deal ends at the end of 2018 and keeping key series such as Game of Thrones and Westworld, whose second pay-TV window is held by Canal+, was strategic to OCS. The channel, which boasted 2.6 million subscribers as of December 2016, will compete with SFR’s new dedicated cinema and TV series network from the summer – and Canal+ was also hoping to get the rights back.

OCS and HBO have been partners since 2008. In 2013, they first renewed their five-year deal by co-launching the OCS City Generation HBO channel, the line-up of which is made of HBO exclusive series and offers a US+24hrs slot .

Season 7 of Game of Thrones will be aired as of July 17th on OCS City and catch-up service OCS Go 24 hours after the first US run.

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