Online streaming service Viu says its strategy around local shows, Korean and Turkish content, as well as partnerships with mobile operators, is paying off in SA.
The company now has an average of 4-million customers each month who use its service.
Viu, which has been present in SA since the third quarter of 2019, is a Hong Kong-based over-the-top video streaming company that started in 2015. Its owners include PCCW Media Group, France’s Canal+ and Vivendi.
Rohit D’Silva, chief business officer for the Middle East and SA at Viu, told Business Day growth has been helped by how receptive South Africans are to watching content, together with a loyalty to local favourites.
“That’s a trend we see globally, we see that in the markets that we operate in with Viu, and we definitely see that in SA.”
The company entered the SA market, dominated by Africa’s largest pay TV provider MultiChoice, with a combination of local dramas and soapies, Korean content — which is growing in popularity globally — and Turkish content, together with more traditional international content from Hollywood.
Viu has a deal to show popular SABC-produced content such as Muvhango, 7 de Laan, Generations and Skeem Saam.
D’Silva said their typical market is “the everyday South African who likes to watch content, mostly on mobile, who often downloads his/her favourite shows during the day on Wi-Fi and then watches on his or her way home.”
Viu’s business model is premised on two options for customers.
First is a free tier where customers have limited access to selected dramas and variety shows. Viu makes money through advertising with this tier.
The premium option places no limitations on content access, cuts out ads, has unlimited downloads, access to smart TV features and is in high definition. That package sits at R69 per month.
Viu understands that it has to stand out.
Unlike pay TV, where DStv is the only game in town, the streaming services market has become saturated. Consumers can easily cancel or switch allegiance between the likes of MultiChoice’s Showmax, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, Disney+ and others.
“You watch a whole path order of content for free and there is a subscription layer on top of that, so if you want to watch certain additional things then you subscribe. I think that’s very important and we’ve had this model since our inception,” D’Silva said.
Competing services — Showmax or Netflix — have tended to offer a free first month of viewing before users have to subscribe. YouTube, the world’s largest video streaming service owned by Google, has a free tier open to people around the world, making money through ads. Its premium options take ads out and offer additional features such as the ability to download videos.
Dual model
“We find lots of players in the online streaming space are [now] going in with a dual model of a free and a paid layer,” said D’Silva.
“We’re happy that we started off with it. Also, going back to content, we’re seeing content from various parts of the world travel. We’ve always believed in it, so we’re happy with these trends.”
Viu has also struck deals with mobile operators Vodacom and MTN to offer bundled packages for subscriptions and reduced rates on mobile data.
Seeing the success of SA dramas on its platform, Viu has gone on to produce its own local original shows with titles such as Six in the City and Courting Anathi.
In recent years, streaming services have spent increasingly large budgets on new shows, hoping to capture new subscribers while keeping existing ones.
In that mix, local content has become a big battleground for content providers.
Earlier in 2023, Netflix said it spent more than R2bn on film and TV projects in SA in 2016-22. This is against an estimated annual global budget of $17bn (R323bn) that the streaming giant spends on original content.
The US company’s approach of creating local content in a number of countries where it operates has brought it much success in recent years. Money Heist, a Spanish-language drama series, set viewing records for the platform as global audiences watched it in droves during lockdown. Netflix has experienced similar success with the Korean-language Squid Game.
D’Silva says Korean content has proven to be popular with its SA audiences. Viu has seen the same trend in its other markets. He attributes part of that success to great storytelling, noting that the Korean industry is competitive, which has worked to push up the quality of the country’s productions.
Coming back to SA, Netflix has been devoting its deep pockets to its own local productions such as Blood & Water, Queen Sono and How To Ruin Christmas.
In June, MultiChoice said its local content library contains more than 76,000 hours of viewing, representing 50% of total general entertainment content spend for the year to end-March. The group spent R20.9bn on content in the period.
It did not say, however, how much it will spend on content for this year, but the aggressive spending trend to stay ahead of rivals indicates it may even be more.
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