One minute OTT services are having trouble attracting sufficient content to launch, the next minute content businesses are queueing up to get in on the latest OTT act. This week Starz has signed up with AT&T’s DirecTV Now, to hitch a ride on the OTT bus.
Starz of course is out of the Liberty Media stable, controlled by John Malone, who incidentally is the guy who engineered the sale of DirecTV to AT&T in the first place. It is his deep connections with AT&T and his shadowy hand behind Charter Communications, which suggest to us that Charter will never be purchased by Verizon – it would break his AT&T stranglehold, which has seen two major deals make him one of the richest men in the word.
Starz and Starz Encore will be a premium add on service at DirecTV Now, charged at $8 a month extra and making it just that bit easier to cut the cord, knowing your favorite film services are in place. It gives customers access to one of the largest premium pay TV libraries in the world adding some 2,500 TV episodes and movies.
If DirecTV is going to lasso over 1 million customers in its first year, it is going to need partnerships like this, and not just one, but multiple deals, making it so that any customer can buy a combo of channels and premium services for just about any buy-in price they can manage, as long as it is less than cable charged for the same content.
AT&T will have to get its skates on if it wants to keep up with the other rival OTT players out there. This week HBO told investors that its HBO Now service has reached 2 million subscribers adding them at a rate of 100,000 a month. If the AT&T Time Warner deal goes ahead, all of that will fall into the hands of AT&T and it will overnight take US leadership in OTT services in the US, except it will be behind long running services Netflix, Amazon and Hulu. Turner networks also said that it was almost at the 2 million mark, but that’s by selling through virtual MVPDs, including DirecTV Now.
“With the addition of Starz, we’re continuing to broaden the appeal of DirecTV Now, creating an unmatched entertainment experience,” said Dan York, chief content officer for AT&T.
The two Starz channels were already available bundled into the $70 “gotta have it” package which came out at launch, but this is an additional premium VoD service.