Zattoo will integrate Sky Deutschland’s pay-TV offer into its white label platform for IPTV network operators in Germany.
The partnership covers the entire Sky channel line-up, including the live games of the German football Bundesliga, the UEFA Champions League, Formula 1 live coverage as well as series and films.
The first network operators intend to provide their customers with the Sky access this summer, in time for the start of the 2019/20 Bundesliga season.
Zattoo is the first and so far only provider of TV-as-a-Service solutions for network operators to offer such an integration, according to the company. Visitors to German trade fair ANGA COM 2019 in Cologne can take a first look at the Sky integration at the Zattoo stand R9 in hall 8.
With the Sky integration, Gernot Jaeger, Chief Officer B2B TV Solutions, wants to expand Zattoo’s leading position as a TV-as-a-Service provider for hosted IPTV services under the network operators’ own brand and design in Germany. Customers include NetCologne, EWE TEL and M-net.
“A full-scale IPTV offering today also includes premium pay-TV with premium sports, Bundesliga football, UEFA Champions League, top series and films – all of which can now be used directly via the Zattoo platform,” said Jaeger. “This is a clear USP of the Zattoo platform and a strong argument for network operators in the competition for end customers.”
All Sky channels are transcoded, encoded and protected via multi-DRM in the Zattoo back-end and can be played out directly over the networks of the network operators. The end customers do not need any additional hardware such as smartcard or CI+ module to use the Sky channels: The network operator’s standard TV box is sufficient.