Antena 3 Internacional was the beginning of the journey abroad for the Atresmedia group, which currently operates three more international channels -Atreseries, ¡HOLA! TV and Atrescine- and the streaming video platform, ATRESplayer Premium.
The group’s focus today is to provide more VOD content to its distribution partners, the pay-TV operators, in order to help them provide the best customer experience for their subscribers. Javier Nuche, general director of Diversification at Atresmedia Internacional, mentioned that they see many opportunities for collaboration and growth through their OTT platform, ATRESplayer Premium Internacional, which was launched in 2019.
The journey continued with the launch of ¡HOLA! TV (2013) that emerged as a joint project with their partners of ¡HOLA! magazine. “For them, it made perfect sense to jump to an audiovisual format and Atresmedia turned out to be the ideal partner because our know-how in production and distribution of content and channels complemented very well all the expertise of the magazine and its access to celebrities,” he said.
The third portfolio signal to reach the region was Atreseries (2015). “A natural evolution of our channel portfolio that emerged at the time when the series from Spain- and especially those of Atresmedia – began to enjoy wide recognition in Latin America and the US Hispanic market,” Nuche highlighted.
Series like Gran Hotel, El Tiempo entre Costuras and Velvet marked a before and after. “They represented a definitive leap in quality in our productions which, together with a greater discovery of them worldwide, really generated a boom with our series that still persists today,” he said.
Atrescine (2018), the fourth and youngest channel of the group, emerged as a joint project with Videomercury, after realizing that there was no channel dedicated to Spanish cinema. “We saw the market opportunity and we reached a very advantageous alliance with Videomercury for both parties: they provide the content and we provide them access to distribution and the ability to bundle the channel with the rest of our international channels,” explains Nuche.
“If 25 years ago, when we launched Antena 3 Internacional, they would have told me that today we were going to be the European private group with the most number of channels outside our borders, I would have felt a bit of vertigo. But it is very satisfying to see how we have grown at the same time that the audiovisual entertainment industry around the world, that we have not lost our pulse, that we have been able to anticipate changes, such as when we launched Atreseries, or now, with our platform ATRESPlayer,” adds Mar Martínez-Raposo, general director of Atresmedia Internacional.