Premiere is aiming to convert the hundreds of thousands of pirate viewers illegally viewing the platform into legitimate subscribers through a new campaign. The German DTH operator, currently in the final stages of a card swap out programme will use “special distribution channels” to target the non-payers.
“We are confident that we can convince many pirate viewers of the benefits of a legal Premiere package. When the gap in the system has been closed, all pirate viewers will sit in front of a blank screen. That gives us a big marketing opportunity, especially in the 4th quarter,” said CEO Michael Börnicke.
Ongoing piracy continued to eat into subscriber numbers in the second quarter, but Premiere was still able to register subscriber numbers of 4,156,810, including 3,554,696 direct subscribers and 603,114 subscribers through Arena. This represents an increase of 2% on the year but a fall of 84,657 customers on the quarter.
Revenues increased by 18.9% to €272.4 million, leading to EBITDA of €11.2m, ahead of the €10.2m figure for Q2 2007.
As Premiere’s autumn campaign gets underway, Premiere intends to harness new technologies including HD and personal video recorders to drive numbers and maintain loyalty. “Millions of modern flat-screens are sold every year. The only television broadcaster currently showing programming suited to these high-quality screens is Premiere. Our objective is thus to make Premiere an integral part of the sale of as many HD flat-screens as possible,” said Börnicke.
