SA’s ShowMax has VOD you need

ONLINE STREAMING: John Kotsaftis, General Manager of ShowMax South Africa, at yesterday's launch of the VOD service.

ONLINE STREAMING: John Kotsaftis, General Manager of ShowMax South Africa, at yesterday's launch of the VOD service.

Published Aug 20, 2015

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THE ways viewers are consuming TV has evolved – especially with most of them preferring to binge-watch.

And while Pay-TV works hard to satisfy the needs of its viewers, video-on-demand online streaming networks have penetrated the market, too.

VIDI was the first to make a noise in this niche sector of the market in the latter part of last year. Now, ShowMax have thrown its competitive oar into the VOD arena.

While VIDI subscribers pay a monthly subscription fee of R149, ShowMax is offering their service at R99 a month.

Hours before ShowMax held their launch, VIDI announced that its content is also now available as a TV app on Samsung Smart.

At the launch, John Kotsaftis, the General Manager of ShowMax, revealed that their catalogue includes: blockbuster movies, top-notch Hollywood TV series, a best of British menu as well as a local line-up of TV shows (new and throwbacks like Agter Elke Man and Orkney Snork Nie) as well as home-grown big screen offerings. And kids are also aptly catered for across the board.

Kotsaftis said: “This has been a labour of love for me and the team for quite some time. It’s a phenomenal step and the beginning of something amazing in SA.”

Although, SA’s broadband capacity pales in comparison to other countries, Kotsaftis believes that this is the best time to launch as that status quo is evolving.

He shared: “The world has been changing. Broadband has been expanding everywhere. There’s a lot of investment in fibre. That’s all going to explode. We have seen it happen in markets like China. We have some interest in that space. The explosion of connectivity is going to change the behaviour of people.”

He revealed that they have taken a long-term view with this initiative.

“We think this is the way the world is going to go and we want to be there and grow it. This business is about content. We live and die by the content.”

ShowMax has secured Entourage, Game of Thrones (seasons 1 to 5), Ray Donovan, The Wire as well as Sherlock, to mention a few.

In total, viewers have over 11 000 hours of entertainment at their disposal.

Kotsaftis added: “To give you a sense of the scale of what we have put together. We have about 750 titles of TV series available. There are about 850 complete seasons. Basically, if you watched ShowMax every single day for 24 hours, you would stop watching sometime in November 2016. And this is just the beginning. We are going to continuously evolve this platform by looking at what consumers are watching. Their behaviour might be completely different to what we expected…”

In terms of procuring content, they purchase stuff from the second window of content available. The first window is where MultiChoice dominates.

He revealed: “ It becomes prohibitively expensive to buy up the windows.”

Where ShowMax differs from other VOD platforms is that it is also looking at producing original local content à la Netflix.

While he refrained for revealing their business plan and strategy, Kotsaftis shared: “ We are also introducing five series that have not been aired on TV. One of the shows is The Late Late Show with James Corden. That’s something exclusive to our platform. So it will be fresh. So there is tremendous value in the price range.”

ShowMax is available on a wide-range of smart devices – from mobile phones, tablets, android apps, laptop and desktop computers. You are allowed access for up to five devices with the ability to two different streams simultaneously on different devices. And if you have a Samsung and LG smart TV, you can login via your web browser. For more information log onto: www.showmax.com

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