Keith LeGoy, president, Worldwide Distribution at Sony Pictures Television announced the closing of Crackle Latin America SVOD service.
“As of April 30, we will discontinue the Crackle Latin America SVOD service. An important part of our reimagine efforts has been a top-down review of our current businesses to determine their strength and growth potential in today’s marketplace. After much consideration, we have decided that Crackle Latin America is not sustainable in the present highly competitive local environment,” mentioned LeGoy in a memo to SPT staff.
LeGoy explained that the decision to close Crackle Latin America is unrelated to the U.S. Crackle business, which is operated independently as an ad-supported AVOD service. “We continue to explore potential strategic partnerships for Crackle in the U.S. and will share more information when possible,” he added.
Also, the executive mentioned that even though they are closing Crackle Latin America, the OTT/direct-to-consumer remains an incredibly important area for their evolving industry and the company will persist in exploring other opportunities in that space.
“We also remain focused on our existing core business and channels in the region, Canal Sony and AXN. They are strong brands achieving solid growth and are among the top cable channels in Latin America. We will continue to think big, innovate and invest in these assets and other new prospects that we believe have great potential for our business and our viewers,” LeGoy comments.
Crackle Latin America amassed 65 MSO affiliates across 17 countries in the seven years that operated in the market.