Why we’ve partnered with Player+

If you want to get your streaming content online and seen by (potentially) millions, your approach will depend very much on whether you’re a big brand with an established audience, e.g. a Manchester United, or not. If not, what are your options?

The “build it and they will come” approach of global brands like Man U just isn’t within the grasp of most smaller content owners with streaming ambitions. You may be the innovator with a magic formula, but without a guaranteed audience you may also struggle to acquire compelling content, and in adequate volume - and without the content, you may struggle to engage audiences. A horrible catch-22.

But there is strength in numbers – which is why there is currently so much industry interest and commentary on the subject of genre-based or thematic streaming media hubs. This aggregation of interest-based content (cooking, festivals, holidays, horses, whatever) into one place, from multiple streaming content owners, is a significant development.

And it’s why we’ve partnered with one company in particular - Player+ (www.playerplus.com) – that is at the forefront of building and launching thematic streaming hubs, giving owners of content another way to reach wider audiences within them.

So, what does our relationship with Player+ deliver, and if you’re a provider of genre-based or thematic content, how does it benefit you?

 

Streaming, content, audience: all taken care of

EaselTV provides off-the-shelf, white-labelled streaming services for businesses (brands) who want to go it alone. This is a wonderful way to instantly get your content to an established audience who relate to your brand.  But as we’ve explained above, going it alone just isn’t an option for many streaming content owners - our relationship with Player+ means there is another way!

Through Easel TV and Player+, if you’re a content owner you have all the tools at your disposal to cost-effectively integrate your streamed content into an existing, thriving, thematic streaming hub. You don’t need your own streaming service to instantly create a source of digital revenue, together they provide a ready-made B2B2C OTT/streaming outlet for your content.  

Organisations or individuals representing any number of content owners of the same thematic genre can approach Easel TV or Player+ to create streaming hubs around those themes and genres (as we did, for example, for performing arts and theatre, with StagePlayer+).

 

Fully managed on your behalf

If you’re a content owner who wants to deliver a streaming service within a thematic hub but would also like it to be editorially managed, administered, and operated for you, the relationship between Easel TV and Player+ is an optimal combination, offering as it does a unique combination of complete technology solution and managed service capability.

Easel TV provides the end-to-end streaming solution for creating the branded video service across multiscreen consumer apps - including TV, mobile and web - as a fully managed service.

Player+ then adds the content into athematic hub to bring it to market - an outlet that you can monetise by enabling viewers to discover, access and consume content directly, as a community immersed in that genre.

 

A route to D2C-hungry audiences

Our relationship with Player+ gives content owners more options, they operate a D2C offering though their own store(under their own banner) or through hub supermarkets (Player+ hubs). It offers choice, and for some, therefore, a stepping-stone to a virtual and digital revenue stream, and a means to build an audience.

It also offers clients that work within the Player+/Easel TV partnership the potential for seamless migration from selling through a hub (the supermarket), building an audience, to later getting your own branded streaming service (your own store).

The thematic element maximises relevancy, variation, scale, and availability of content to the targeted audience and therefore supports a more successful conversion rate when establishing that audience.

 

Good news for us, you, and the market, too

Making genre-based and thematic hubs happen is critical for the health and growth of the streaming industry, as research indicates that subscribers are now more likely to choose an extra thematic niche service on top of their existing streaming services, instead of adding another new general entertainment service.

In joining forces with Player+, we are therefore supporting what we know to be the future direction of travel, whilst ensuring that the smaller streaming content owners – including B2B clients - can tap into it, and feel the full benefit of the industry’s evolution.

For Easel TV, as a brand, it is about continuing the innovation and differentiation that have been our hallmark since we started operating.

For some streaming content owners, however, it has been the difference between survival and extinction, as the pandemic restrictions bit, venues emptied, and theatre found a new route into consumers’ cultural and social lives.

Between us, Easel TV and Player+ created a lifeline for those clients. Now it’s time to take it further and enable all manner of content genres to thrive in environments where the audience fits the bill.

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