Combining sports and general entertainment content, The Walt Disney Company continues to strengthen its digital strategy within Latin America with the launch of its second SVOD Star+, on August 31.
The new service includes original fiction and non-fiction series from Latin America and international, ESPN sports, 20th Television comedies and exclusive movie premieres.
Original stories have been produced in the last year from Mexico to Argentina in both, fiction and non-fiction formats. Santa Evita stands out with Non Stop in Argentina, three versions of No fue mi culpa with BTF in Mexico, with Vista Productions in Colombia and with Cinefilm in Brazil, and a new season of Impuros; or the comedy El galán. La TV cambió, él no with Estudios Telemexico and Los Protectores with Kapow in Argentina; the dramatic comedies Terapia Alternativa and El Encargado; the thrillers Insania and Horario Estelar; the biopics Ringo with Pampa Films in Argentina (which also produces Limbo) and Pancho Villa. El Centauro del Norte with BTF in Mexico; and the docu-reality Bios. Vidas que cambiaron la tuya.
Natalia Scalia, SVP and Head of DTC, The Walt Disney Latin America highlights Star+ complementary nature with Disney+: ‘While the second best reflects a children’s family audience with Disney Animation, Pixar and Marvel, Instead, the first is focusing on the general adult entertainment audience, with all the force of Fox products such as The Simpsons -it will premiere its 32nd season on the platform- and the combination with ESPN sports, bringing a unique streaming offering’.
Star+ and Disney+ jointly bring a ‘higher value proposal’, together and integrated: ‘We went through a merger of Disney and Fox (now Star) and this is the next step in expanding our footstream track’, Scalia adds, and continues: ‘Sport is disruptive, but we look for behavior, the platform and permanent consumption. The segment has a dynamic of constant update and will allow Star+ a content refresh within the same day. Sports will allow us to go deeper with the content, including the US Open, where the public will be able to choose what to watch without the limitations of linear channels’.
About the distribution partners, she indicates: ‘We can combine the services due to the quality of the product. That is why we offer the Plus as a unified plan, once we synchronize the access credentials. There is a strong identity around the world of Disney, which is very careful, and Star+ speaks to an adult in the same way. We work to make it seamless to move from one app to the other’.
‘We are going to offer direct contracting, the Plus combo, or the service through a wide range of Pay TV operators, telcos and e-commerce players. We also add Mercado Pago within the options. This part is key, because in Latin America we have challenges of payment methods, accessibility and lack of banking. That’s why we offer more distributors in different categories’, she underlines.
‘Latin America is growing and diversifying. There are many platforms, but we do not see this as a problem, because it makes the market continue to expand. We have a robust product with a specific weight and we are looking for the space that we are going to occupy. I imagine that later there will be a consolidation in the references in streaming and we will be one of them’, concludes Scalia.
