By Fernando Moura, in São Paulo
The enthusiasm and optimism of the major players in the Brazilian streaming market is evident, as they are all betting on double-digit growth in the coming years and evaluating, in some cases, an increase in their subscriber base in the order of 25% to 30% by the end of 2021.
Globoplay, a leading local OTT exponent, will produce 102 originals in 2021/22, 75 of which are own productions and 47 in co-production with independent producers, confirmed Erick Brêtas, Chief Digital Officer of Grupo Globo, during a panel held on “Brasil Streaming” the last month. Participating at «New services and the platform strategy», he also admitted that Globoplay’s competition in streaming field is ‘greater’ if compared to Globo on the Free-To-Air space: ‘In the Pay TV market there has always been a more fragmented competition, but nothing compares to the streaming war’, he completed.
According to Bretas, the biggest challenges in the market are content and its scalability: ‘We may reach to 13 or 14 different platforms by the end of 2021. In addition to quantity, we are facing a content shortage, since many platforms are vertical, like Disney +, which is our partner. There is a competition for talent and technology. The latter needs to scale infrastructure faster’ (see more information in the standalone article of Globoplay).
The panel also gathered Gustavo Fonseca, VP DirecTV Go Latin America, Aline Jabbour, business development and content acquisitions director at Samsung TV Plus Latin America, Superna Kalle, COO, StarzPlay, and Eldes Mattiuzzo, general director, Telecine, who said that the company opted, during the pandemic, ‘for remain the first viewport’.
‘The fact that we are recognized as the premium window of the cinema has generated an increase in the audience on linear channels, catch-up TV and direct access. From a practical point of view, we are suffering from the closing of the cinemas because the big promotion is missing. The Studios released between 30 and 40 films a year, and that was reduced. For this, we created a label, Premier Telecine’, added Mattiuzzo.
‘The result has been very interesting because they are low-budget films that need to be monetized on alternative platforms like ours», and thus allowed to deliver news to users. The past year has doubled the number of audiences that only consume Telecine in streaming (Direct-to-Consumer)’, he completed.
Fonseca stated that ‘the audience in Latin America of DirecTV GO live is 70% against 30% of videos on demand, so the role of the platform is to show what is happening and, on the contrary than you think, it’s not just journalism and live sports’.
On the panel “From macro to micro: opportunities for the AVOD model and niche models in Brazil”, Julio Worcman, general director, Grupo Curta!, Carolina Vargas,founder & CEO Stenna, Cícero Aragon, president-director Container Media and Box Brazil, and Maurício Cotait, ViacomCBS / Pluto TV. The latter confirmed the platform reached in 130 days of operation 6 million active users in Brazil: ‘We are a secure and free platform. To be a free service we coincide with the Brazilian culture’.
He further commented: ‘We have content of various types. The success will go through models of AVOD, one of the most important models of Pluto TV, ‘where one tries to reproduce the linear experience with added services in streaming. The vast majority of the content, with 36 linear channels, is not ViacomCBS’.
Aragon described the business model of the company’s new product, Gremio TV, and said that the most important thing about the project is that the channel will generate a ‘permanent connection’ with the club, with the team: ‘We integrate apps in a single solution, breaking the paradigm of what the football team is not just football. We believe that it is possible to deliver the entire solution in a single experience, with all the technology on board’.
In the afternoon, two panels were addressed: first “Licensing and contracting content for OTT services” and “Regulatory and tax scenario for the streaming market”. In the first, the debate was about licensing content on OTT platforms and what are the models used in the country.
The participants were Fábio Lima, Sofa Digital, João Palomino, LiveSports, Maurício Fitippaldi, CQSFV Advogados, Carlos Alckimin, SimbaContent and Fernando Ramos, Globo, who said there has been an ‘improvement’ in consumption and delivery quality, but that traditional consumption is still relevant, so that ‘there is still a very big way’.
He concluded: ‘Therefore, the change and diversification of the distribution offer for other platforms is essential since it is now necessary to ‘find and understand that there are other means where consumption can be done in a more fluid way. This can be for a stand-alone product or for linear content on the Internet’.
Alckimin, from SimbaContent, a joint venture created three years ago by SBT, Record TV and Rede TV, underlined that the challenge is the network licensing for OTT services that started offering free TV channels on their platforms. ‘Faced with changes in consumer desire, we understand that our audience is more connected, so we are forcing to license our content for streaming to democratize and simplify the delivery of our content’.
He finalized: ‘We license Live Streaming Simulcast from free TV channels, not the VOD distribution of their collection. Our work goes through this, and today it is important because there are many problems in distribution. The channel is opened by a federal concession, but when the channel changes to the network because an operator places it in a controlled environment and exploits that service and receives something, if it is not licensed by us, it infringes copyrights. It is not possible to distribute digital signals from our channels without our authorization’.
The last panel of the event debated on how the streaming market grows as a Value-Added Service, but the tax reality is still confusing for content owners and operators. Including risk of international taxation. Ana Paula Bialler, BFA Advogados, Marcelo Bechara, Globo, Ana Paula Santana, Sky and Marcos Bitelli, Bitelli Advogados warned on the need to have equal taxation for traditional pay TV services and new OTT services.
Thus, Bialler stated that in Brazil there is a lack of ‘legal clarity’, and the tax evolution is not ready to be able to generate this clarity, while Santana added that there is a lack of detail in many aspects, even in the invoice issued to the user. ‘There is a concern with the day-to-day operation. The challenge is to operate in a highly regulated environment such as Pay TV, and in OTT, a new offer, but with very unclear operating rules. We are on both sides, we know the challenge and we need both markets (OTT and Pay TV) to have clearer rules and be similar’, she concluded.
