Amagi provides support services for the launch of the FAST channels of Spanglish Movies, FLOU Caribeño, and FLOU Cine, as well as a third one related to gaming and entertainment to be announced soon.
“The FAST model has become a trend for all traditional media,” said Ronaldo Dias, director of Sales for the Americas of the Hispanic Segment of Amagi.
Dias explained that the trend is also gaining momentum in Latin America (in the US it is much more advanced) due to several factors, including the excess of subscription services and the saturation of the industry. “There is a saturation of subscription apps. There isn’t much more room for growth,” he noted. The possibility of a recession is also a factor that leverages the FAST. He also mentioned the challenge of finding content. “The FAST concept is very interesting because it’s easy to find content.” Another great accelerator of the trend is programmatic advertising “because it is the evolution of technology and brands.”
He added that Spanglish Movies’ FAST channel offering is ideal for this business segment because movies is one of the best-performing formats in this environment. In addition, segmentation is key to the success of a FAST channel.
He noted that Amagi’s FAST channel solution is fast to deploy. For instance, they began to negotiate with Spanglish Movies in March of last year and in July 2022 the first channel came out. The FLOU Cine and FLOU Caribeño channels offer is available in the US on several platforms and is now entering Mexico, Canada, Australia, Colombia, and other Latin American countries. “We bring a lot of value to channels and platforms. We connect the content with the platform directly. There is no need for a contract. It’s like e-commerce. Another added value is that they provide content analytics in real-time.”
Amagi has a worldwide portfolio of 3,200 to 3,300 FAST channels, according to Dias.
Gustavo Aparicio, Managing Director of Spanglish Movies, reported that they created FAST channels as another source of income for their content creators -adding this to film production, distribution, SVOD, and AVOD licenses- and as a way to supply exclusive content to underserved and profitable markets.
“We are proud to work with the Amagi team in delivering FLOU channels. Ronaldo Dias, Jaya Myneni, Leslie Falbo, and Achin Jain have been instrumental in delivering first-tier players such as Sling and TCL; and for the rapid growth of inventory,” said Aparicio.