Johan Bolin, chief business officer, media and broadcast, at Agile Content, takes a look at the competition for eyeballs between pay-TV and OTT, and how European pay-TV providers need to arm themselves with industry expertise, experience, and the capacity to constantly evolve the technology in order to compete
By Contributor
Published: January 5, 2023
Johan Bolin, chief business officer, media and broadcast, at Agile Content, takes a look at the competition for eyeballs between pay-TV and OTT, and how European pay-TV providers need to arm themselves with industry expertise, experience, and the capacity to constantly evolve the technology in order to compete
target=_blank title=Share on LinkedIn class=share-linkedin>
The TV market has experienced a rapid transformation over the last couple of years. In fact, all sectors experienced a change as the internet widened the existing global market, altering how users behave and ultimately, replacing legacy technology stacks. For audiences consuming TV this has been a revolution, both in terms of the quality and amount of content on offer, as well as the overall experience. More content than ever is now being produced and made readily available via several streaming services, while traditional TV providers are offering channel bundles and including streaming services to maintain a relevant proposition.
However, from a provider perspective, this has introduced several challenges.
Internet transformation TV markets used to be constrained by geographical country borders as well as the limited reach of distribution technology. The network that was used to distribute the content inside a region, often exclusively licensed content, was also focused locally.
Some of the more obvious examples are the coaxial networks for cable TV or terrestrial networks for broadcast, which are technologies with limited reach due to technical constraints. The only technology with a more global reach was satellite TV, but this presented several cost barriers for smaller locally based channels. This brought about a small pool of competitors per market, both in sense of distributors, as well as TV channels. As the distribution technology stacks were exclusively used for TV distribution, the budget for technical investments was restricted, meaning that TV business was primarily about sales and marketing, fostering a status quo culture of slow innovation.
The rise of the internet and internet-distributed TV, as well as streaming, completely changed the game. First, technical and financial barriers to get viewers access are now gone. As the internet is now global, barriers related to local distribution technology are effectively removed, inviting global competition. Moreover, as the internet is a platform that stimulates innovation, fostering new ideas and concepts, TV has also started to face increasing competition from other types of services that we might not immediately refer to as television, such as YouTube, Twitch and TikTok. From a user perspective, this offers a new alternative for consuming video and naturally, new ways of distributing it. However, in order to stay competitive in this new reality, all providers must adopt not only the technology stacks used to distribute on the internet, but also the innovative culture and methodologies.
The opportunity Today, we have a pay-TV market that is very fragmented, with smaller local players that cover specific regions. This presents many challenges for building, operating and evolving a service and its underlying technology. For example, in Europe, there are more than 200 pay-TV providers, and most of them have less than 500K subscribers. It's clear that this scale pales in significance with other territories such as APAC and North America.
At the same time the internet presents a big opportunity for these small to mid-sized pay-TV providers. For decades now, a common practice has been to make use of managed services as part of an operational model. This focuses efforts on the core of the business, with a third-party specialist handling everything else. The problem here is that in the traditional model there's limited ability to scale. While the managed services provider might argue that they can be more effective due to market expertise, running this on premise integrated and often customised, means having a lot of people physically inside the organisation. The customisation itself brings a need to understand other aspects of that integration rather than a wider industry expertise.
But, in the same way the internet helps to reduce distances and blur borders, it also enables new efficient models for operating and cooperating. This means that the one developing, installing, and operating a system, doesn't have to physically be in the same place as where the service is based. With SaaS we introduce another abstract layer as the functionality is offered as an API and the user doesn't have to think about configuring or managing the actual software behind the deployment. This offers a much smarter way to increase collaboration and achieve better scale advantage across many areas where running operations locally hinders efficiency. While there are components that may not be optimal to place in the cloud, like caches deployed near the edges of the ISP network, much of the logic also for those applications can still be executed in the cloud. This cloud-assisted or hybrid cloud model also enables anon-prem deployed infrastructure to be offered and operated in SaaS, drastically simplifying management and operations.
Its operational capacities, technical expertise, and successful integration means it can advance in the consolidation of the European pay-TV and streaming market enabling the value of scale in technology and operations. By unifying the world of content and broadband, the full potential
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Johan Bolin, chief business officer, media and broadcast, at Agile Content, takes a look at the competition for eyeballs between pay-TV and OTT, and how European pay-TV providers need to arm themselves with industry expertise, experience, and the capacity to constantly evolve the technology in order to compete
