Sling TV would be very interested in launching on Apple TV now that the latter is embracing apps, according to Roger J. Lynch CEO, Sling TV.
Speaking in a keynote and subsequent Q&A at IBC, he added that the OTT service, which launched in the US seven months ago, is already available on Amazon Fire TV, Kindle, Roku and Xbox, and following the consumer and what they want. Lynch revealed that over 90% of its customers also have Netflix, which he sees as a complementary service. Furthermore, while almost two-thirds create their package on their phone, they invariably still go on to watch the content on TV.
Lynch said that almost no customers from its parent company Dish, which has almost 14 million subscribers, are coming over to Sling TV. Sling TV’s target is millennials, cord cutters and ‘supplementers’, namely people who already have pay-TV and want more.
Sling TV, he continued, is segmenting the market, breaking the big bundles.
Lynch revealed that a watershed moment for Sling TV was entering into an agreement with in March 2014 with Disney to secure ESPN, the most expensive basic channel in the US.
He added that Sling TV’s basic 23-channel package, containing lots of premium services, costs $20 a month, with additional genre-based packages and |HBO costing $5 and $15 a month respectively.
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Sling TV also provides a lot of international channels. In total, its offer consists of 250 channels in 20 languages. However, its focus is on premium content, such as ESPN, and it has a mobile first strategy.
Sling TV uses dynamically placed advertising and Lynch said he believed the service could eventually make two to three times as much on advertising as the satellite business (Dish TV).
Significantly, he said there were no immediate plans to expand the service beyond the US, though all the building blocks for doing so were now in place.
