Riivi is a digital player that emerged in Chile and it is expanding in Latin America with recent launches in Colombia and Peru, with Mexico to follow before the end of the year. This AVOD offers some 500 regional and international contents, serving just over 200,000 users in those markets.
Prensariospoke with Cristóbal Güell, CEO, María Ignacia BarjaAtik, Acquisition and Content Manager, and Thomas Dabovich, Commercial Manager, who described the business model, content strategy, and expansion plans for the coming months. ‘Our platform is doing very well in Chile, with some 175,000 users. The launches in Peru and Colombia, with 15,000 users each, make us very happy. We are now also available on Samsung and LG SmarTVs, and we continue to add distribution partners’, they stated.
The bet is to consolidate each operation before taking the next step. ‘Technologically we are prepared to offer our service throughout the region, but it is not what we want to do. We prefer to secure a strong foundation in each country, have the best content from local creators, and be ready to move the next chip. This strategy is giving us very good results and we will promote it’, they added.
Riivinow has 500 titles available in total; in Peru and Colombia it has an initial catalog of 140 contents, with 20-30 new ones each month. ‘We are not in a rush to offer all the content at once. The objective is to make the audience fall in love, and not only with the best Latin American and international content, but also with an attractive design that improves the user experience’.
The chosen business model is revenue share with producers and distributors. ‘The AVOD has proven to be a safe and expanding model. In this first stage we will continue here without offering channels or original production, although we do not rule it out. The key here is to be assertive and make decisions that take us down the path we need to travel’.
Güell, Barjaand Dabovichemphasized that the ‘main plan’ is to make the AVOD known to the audiovisual community and to audiences with an ambitious marketing and communication plan that, according to the executives, is beginning to give its first ‘positive results’.
‘We seek the massification of Latin content. There is a lot of prejudice with it, but our job is to find it, heal it and deliver it in the best possible way to the audience, which is responding very well to our proposal. We want to be a clean brand, offer a differential value to what is found today in Latin America”, described the CEO.
Barjaremarked that Riivialready offer 58 RCTV International contents with the most emblematic novels of Venezuela such as Abigail or Mi Gorda Bella, among many others; also, another 28 films from Delart Distribution (USA); and ‘jewels of Latin American cinematography’ such as Sexo con Amor, along with other auteur film productions.
‘We have niche content, but very commercial. That is why we also offer some productions from Lionsgate (USA): we are not closed to anyone, but we want to build a Latin American identity’,she added.
In this sense, the axis of work according to Güell is ‘promoting processes, not results’. And Barja stressed: ‘More than 50% of our content was never streamed or distributed to other countries outside of its original market. We are generating demand and supply of content with enormous potential. And we give ourselves the luxury of having some premieres such as the Chilean feature film Mientes and El Bailarín de Cuba (USA), which was recognized at the Guadalajara Festival’.
Soon, along with reinforcing the offer of fiction (features and series) and documentaries, Riivi will begin to explore Latin American animation. ‘The pan-regional audience is more open to discovering content from their own region. It is imperative to over-attend to this neglected market, and at the same time limit the frustration of not finding what they are looking for’, concluded the executives.
