AAA Entertainment Launches iBiskop Globally at Cannes

AAA Entertainment recently attended the prestigious Cannes Film Festival where it launched its digital transactional-video-on-demand (TVOD) platform, iBiskop to the global film market. As the first South African feature films sales agency to attend Cannes, AAA was there to sell some of Africa's top quality feature films as well to aggregate content for their platform iBiskop.

Whilst there are numerous video on demand platforms springing up around Africa, iBiskop is unique in that is has been purposefully developed to address the three major challenges of the African media consumer environment.

AAA Entertainment Director Pascal Schmitz explains further, there are three main reasons that most of the nearly one hundred video-on-demand platforms launched across Africa are failing to gain traction. iBiskop has developed solutions for all of these factors and has already started rolling them out for the South African market specifically.

Schmitz goes on to elaborate on these reasons, the first being the exorbitant cost of data, still well out of reach of most consumers. There are millions of South Africans who would love to access film content on their mobile phones but simply cannot afford to do so because of the data costs, he explains. Ibiskop has partnered with GO!planet to address this issue by providing free wifi at twenty high density commuter locations, such as major taxi ranks, across the country. These wifi hot spots will be rolled out to almost all commuter locations throughout the year. Free wifi means no data costs and easy downloads for all.

The second issue for VOD platforms is that of payment, as most sites accept payment only via credit or debit card. South Africa, and indeed Africa as a whole, has very low penetration of credit card use, effectively shutting out millions of potential consumers. iBiskop has therefore partnered with OTT, a pre-paid voucher service, making it possible for anyone with cash to make a purchase on the platform. These pre-paid vouchers can be purchased through pre-paid vendors in commuter centres, as well as a variety of retailers, such as Glocell, Caltex Fresh Stop and Fashionworld stores with many new retail outlets coming online soon. These OTT vouchers can also be purchased at many vendors at the taxi ranks. To find out where the vouchers can be purchased simply visit http://find.ott-mobile.com/. With these vouchers, purchasing via iBiskop is possible without a credit card or even a bank account.

Lastly, iBiskop has addressed the pricing issue that makes pirates DVDs an attractive alternative to consumers, making feature length films available for $1 or R10 per film and shorts for $0,40c or R4. This cost is for a download to own as opposed to a streaming or rental model, much like a DVD. For R10 people can own a film on their phone or tablet and view it as many times as they wish, similarly to iTunes and other such platforms.

When presented with this innovative retail platform at Cannes, many international film agencies have agreed to license their content to the iBiskop platform. AAA Entertainment is the exclusive aggregator for all South African film content on the platform and interested filmmakers are urged to contact them for more information.

Register on iBiskop at www.iBiskop.io and find out more about AAA Entertainment at www.aaa-entertain.com

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South Africa

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