BBC Studios and ITV announce joint SVOD venture Britbox will launch in Australia
BBC Studios and ITV have announced their plans to launch ad-free subscription video on demand service (SVOD) Britbox in Australia.
Britbox is a 50/50 joint venture between the BBC’s principal commercial arm and the UK’s biggest commercial broadcaster, offering a breadth of British content from across the decades.
BritBox will offer Australians access to a broad scope of British-made content
The service launched in North America in March 2017, followed by its UK launch in November 2019.
Fiona Lang, general manager for BBC Studios ANZ, hopes to build on the momentum of North America.
“There’s a real opportunity to build on the momentum and brand that has been established in North America and to make Britbox part of BBC Studios’ future strategy in Australia,” Lang said.
“Complementing our existing partnerships in the region, Britbox will draw on our vast combined catalogue of acclaimed British content and will deliver it directly to Australian audiences via a proven and seamless streaming service.”
Augustus Dulgaro, ITV Studios executive vice president of Asia Pacific sales and distribution, global entertainment, said: “It’s great to have a new route to market in Australia for ITV’s best loved British content. We know the powerful combination of UK producers and distributors that the BritBox brand represents has been a consumer hit elsewhere and we look forward to bringing it to Australian fans in 2020.”
BBC Studios informed Mumbrella that the introduction of Britbox will not affect its existing relationships with Foxtel and the ABC, calling the two broadcasters ‘valued partners’. As Britbox can offer an extensive catalogue from the BBC and ITV, BBC Studios said that Britbox will be a ‘complementary SVOD service’, offering unique content and shared programs where the content is non-exclusive.
To support the launch in Australia a local team for Britbox will be recruited, including a country manager.
In North America, Britbox offers box sets, drama premieres and live events. The content offering in Australia will be ‘curated especially for the market’.
Britbox is expected to launch in Australia later in 2020, with announcements on content, price and partnerships to follow.
BritBbx has over 1m subscribers in North America.
The launch of Britbox follows the introduction of Disney’s SVOD service Disney+ and Apple TV+ in November last year.
I could never understand why the BBC pulled their global Iplayer from the ANZ market years ago, their content is first class and in demand, looking forward to Britbox.
User ID not verified.
They may have underestimated how tied to the chord their Boomer audience is in Australia
User ID not verified.
If we were talking about any other product this would be classed as “dumping” in international trade terms and would be banned or regulated. They are effectively supplying this SVOD product at less than it costs to produce except that because they own the content and the delivery technology it’s costing them virtually nothing. Time we revised our antiquated media laws. FTA is required to adhere to local content quotas. So should streaming services. In the case of totally foreign content services an old fashioned import tariff might be the go.
User ID not verified.
Does anyone have an update on a launch date into Oz? They have missed a trick not launching whilst everyone was home binge viewing streaming’s services.
User ID not verified.