Telko Partnership Becomes a Special Strategy for Foreign OTT Debuts, Lionsgate Play Collaborates Telkomsel

Services video streaming Lionsgate Play is strengthening its penetration in Indonesia. From original plan, the platform from America Serika is indeed about to start broadcasting in Indonesia at the end of the first quarter of this year. In order to gain early traction, they announced that they had teamed up with Telkomsel.

As is known, the state-owned cellular operator operates the MAXstream application. It contains aggregated content from various companies video on-demand, both local and foreign. The non-exclusive partnership above will also allow MAXstream users to access the content of movies and series that are presented by Lionsgate.

To DailySocial, General Manager of Lionsgate Play Indonesia Guntur S. Siboro said, this collaboration is expected to introduce services video streaming it to the user base Telkomsel. Especially now that they also have a special internet subscription package that provides additional services in the form of access to MAXstream.

"This collaboration is just the beginning, with even more exciting developments with Telkomsel which is planned for the next few months," said Guntur.

Disney + Hotstar in his initial debut also used a similar strategy, cooperating with Telkomsel as an initial partner for its penetration in Indonesia. Current user Telkomsel get special access (even free) to the VOD application. The strategy seems to be going well, according to the latest data from Media Partners Asia (MPA), until earlier this year Disney+ Hotstar already had 2,5 million subscribers in Indonesia.

Apart from that, the VOD market in Indonesia is increasingly attractive. Amid the onslaught of foreign players, local services also continue to sharpen their grip. Moreover, the media conglomerate MNC Group has begun to bring its OTT unit to listed on the United States stock exchange, meaning that there are greater opportunities for global investors to start working on the VOD market in Indonesia.

Apart from Vision+ from MNC, there are other local players who also have quite a significant user base. One of them is Vidio, which is part of another media conglomerate, EMTEK. The MPA report also said earlier this year Vidio already had around 1,1 million paid subscribers.

Decacorns Gojek also steady with the OTT business through Goplay. In fact, they have already started fundraising independent funding to accelerate their business.

It is believed that the VOD market is still wide open for competition. According to Brightcove's research in a report entitled "The Future of OTT in Asia", content is one of the determinants of user interest in VOD services. So with the right content approach strategy, a service can win the market in the future.

Outside of Asia, the name Lionsgate Play is known as STARZPLAY, as well as in its home country of the United States. The name Lionsgate Play was chosen for a country in Asia, because the name "Star" was previously owned by a well-known company in Asia which is also a leading media company.