Telefónica continues to stand out in the Ibero-American market with a robust connectivity and entertainment offer. In the words of Gonzalo Arrisueño Labarthe, content director for the region, we explore Movistar’s commitment to programming and innovative content.
‘Movistar’s operations in the region are positioned to compete very well and with a robust connectivity and entertainment offer in each market. People, as we know, increasingly demand greater and better connectivity and Movistar is focused on this task.
Disruptive solutions
‘From the side of the video and content business, we are advancing in the markets where we offer this service in providing disruptive and complementary solutions to the entire new paradigm that governs content consumption. It is a strong bet that is already giving interesting results.
In programming, he added that they are ‘continuing to maintain the best content in our offer but always with a vision of profitability. The Video business in the region continues to be very stressed financially and therefore we have to be very creative with the entire value chain in continuing to find solutions that allow us to maintain, in this case Pay TV, as a healthy business.’
Bundles with platforms and multi-aggregation
‘We have ventured into several territories in offering bundles with streaming platforms. That is, they are part of our entertainment offer from the moment the client contracts the service. With this we seek to adapt to how the market consumes content today and make it easier for you when thinking about contracting linear and streaming video offers.
‘On the other hand, total multi-aggregation today is not easy given that there are multiple streaming platforms in the market and not all of them can concentrate on a single value proposition. For this reason, I believe that the world of streaming will have to go through a reconversion of the model if the large platforms want to continue growing at the rate they have been doing in recent years,’ he added.
‘Regarding the balance of the large groups that turn to OTT, he mentioned that ‘it has improved to the extent that it is understood that the decision to share distribution windows, in this case the linear channel and streaming, has a cost . And when you decide to go that route, there is no way to continue earning the same in the traditional world and another in the streaming world. For this reason, we must be aware that the accounts must be balanced if we want to maintain Pay TV as a profitable business.
Streaming piracy
On piracy: ‘It worries us a lot. We see that different streaming platforms are proliferating that have a very advanced look and feel and functionalities and that offer thousands of channels and access to all platforms at a ridiculous price for the market. Clearly we must work on this aspect on many fronts, such as improving content security and especially rigorously defining civil and criminal penalties in each country where these types of services are offered.
‘Lately we have not added a relevant amount of new signals because we consider that we have a good balance of these in the offer of the countries where we operate. Regarding VoD content, we always try to add fresh content, both international and local, that generates an impact on our clients.
‘Likewise, linear signals are still important. And we see that in the NPS studies we do with our clients. As long as there is relevant content, the market will go towards it. What will probably happen in the near future is a rearrangement of the number of signals in a Pay TV offer,’ Gonzalo commented.
