Fries
Liberty Global has gone on a buying spree, buying shares in ITV, All3Media and looking at F1 racing.
At the same time, the company sold most of its Chellomedia and Chello DMC businesses to AMC International for €750 million.
During a keynote session at this year’s CTAM EuroSummit’14 Mike Fries explained, that “for many years we owned 65 channels. They were good channels, but those channels didn’t make people subscribe. So we now put the money in direct content investment.
“We exited that business and decided to put our money into direct content investments that we felt for a time would really drive the distribution platform.”
Buying a minority share in ITV was a ‘strategic investment’: “In Europe broadcasters get 70% of the eyeballs. ITV we bought because we thought the company was undervalued.”
“We are now investing in SVOD for our UPC My Prime service. We like to work with content that works for our customers. We are in the business of connecting people to great stuff and are looking at anything that help sus connect the customer with great content.”
Fries sees UPC My Prime as a defense against Netflix-type OTT services and now offers more than 1,200 movies and 2,000 hours of TV-series in the Netherlands, Ireland and Switzerland.
