Rakuten is in Barcelona at Mobile World Congress this week where the streaming platform is speaking to telcos about its offering in the FAST (Free Ad-Supported Streaming TV) market.
The company is expanding its Enterprise Services division, which includes Content Syndication, Monetisation and FAST Channels & Video App Solutions.
Rakuten TV works with major European telecom operators including Virgin Media O2 (UK), MasOrange (Spain), 1&1 (Germany), and Altibox (Norway), as well as top FAST services including VIDAA, Xiaomi TV+, LG Channels, and Samsung TV Plus.
“We’ve been operating streaming and VOD platform for 15 years now. We’ve done many things. We’ve started with TVOD just in Spain, then we expanded to many countries in Europe six years ago. Then back in late 2019, beginning of 2020, we launched AVOD also we were the first platform launching this free content with ads,” said Cédric Dufour, CEO and President of Rakuten TV in a Broadband TV News interview.
Rakuten launched its first FAST channel in 2020, initially as a business to consumer platform, before launching the Enterprise division last autumn.
Dufour says that Rakuten’s 15 years in business means it has a relationship with both international and local studios.
“It’s very important for us to have this balance in each country between global content and local content. And basically, we make this catalogue available to other clients. So, to telcos. For example, it’s what we did with Orange in Spain, where now the Orange client can access the video called RakutenTV which is our content, but it’s not our technology.”
In other markets Rakuten also supplies the technology and has a 35-strong sales team to sell the inventory.
“We are building the channel, we are scheduling the channel, programming the channel, we are connecting the channel with our own connectors to a third-party platform,” says Dufour.
The telcos have come round to the concept of the FAST channel, in part because of what targeted advertising can offer, whereas in the past they were only interested in TVOD because they thought it gave them something different for their offer. “They now realise the fast channel is different because the content is different, the advertising is different. The target is also different, especially the Z generation. They consume more content on Internet on fast channel rather than traditional TV.
Dufour says the popularity of indivisual channels can vary from market to market, Rakuten’s DNA is in movies, but it has helped created single IP channels, dedicated to one TV show, work very well. In Germany, Bollywood content us a success, while in France its Manga. News channels grew in popularity during the US election, while the Paris Olympics increased the popularity of sports channels across the board.
