Antonio Briceño Bein Sports
For beIN SPORTS, the launch of beIN SPORTS XTRA, channel FAST (Free ad-supported streaming TV) in November 2019, has been a profitable strategy.
“We believe, that at the time, the decision made for the FAST channels proved to be the right one with beIN SPORTS XTRA. Consumption of pay-TV channels has dropped due to a change in habit. This has also affected the way advertisers invest, where we have seen that there has been a shift from pay-TV to these content platforms of digital delivery or the Internet. We are going back to the initial model, where the TV was free -over the air- and advertisers will spend their money depending on the engagement, but now with the addition of VOD, excluding live sports that are still appointment viewing,” said Antonio Briceño, general director of beIN SPORTS for North America.
For Briceño they were quick to react and launch the XTRA, which “for us is a success story, we managed to overcome the barrier of distribution on pay-TV platforms, by launching the channel.”
The beIN SPORTS XTRA channel in English is already on Canela, Fanatiz, Fubo, KlowdTV, Samsung TV Plus, Redbox, Roku, Pluto, Sling, Vizio, Xumo, and over-the-air (OTA) in 36 markets, while beIN SPORTS XTRA en Español is in Canela, Fanatiz, Roku, Pluto, Vizio, Xumo and in 33 OTA markets.
“Five years from now we are going to see a very radical change and the majority of the advertising pipeline is going to be investing in these AVOD platforms. It is automatic advertising, the platform itself measures the audience’s habit and removes the barriers of Nielsen and those types of companies,” Briceño says.
