Starz tees up international SVoD roll-out
February 26, 2015
By Colin Mann
Chris Albrecht, Chief Executive Officer, of premium entertainment programmer Starz has revealed further details of its Starz-branded SVoD service – Starz Play International, which it is planning to launch in select emerging markets. Speaking during Starz’ Q4 2014 Results Earnings Conference Call, Albrecht said the project was proceeding well with plans to launch shortly.
He suggested that Starz Play International was a model that it could replicate in other territories and regions outside the US. “It gives us both direct-to-consumer R&D experience, as well as a wholesale experience within SVoD platform as Starz-branded, but that also contain mostly license programming from other distributors around the world and gives us an opportunity to license Starz programming in our choice of windows basically to that platform and we do think that remarkable.”
He felt that a US version of the service – whether or not distributors offered it in ‘walled gardens’ – could benefit from the international experience, but would be a different content offering, because it didn’t have the rights to the films that it licensed outside the US.