Not only Netflix: Online streaming in the UAE - what’s available, where to find it and what’s coming

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The launch of video-streaming service Netflix in the region is a reminder that the television-broadcasting industry has changed so much in the last few years, we are not entirely sure whether we can even call it television any more. Or broadcasting.

With the growth of online and on-demand services steadily chipping away at the traditionally scheduled, linear TV service, the TV environment is virtually unrecognisable from that of even 10 years ago.

Gone are the days of eagerly waiting to catch the latest weekly episode of your favourite show the moment it was broadcast. Who needs that level of commitment when you can download an entire season-long box set and binge-watch it over a weekend?

Gone are the days of needing a TV to watch your favourite shows. Now you can watch on your laptop, tablet or even on your mobile phone, all in crisp, sharp high-definition.

Gone too are the days of TV executives anxiously awaiting the first overnight ratings reports for a new show. They are increasingly meaningless in an era where a large section of the audience will watch the shows on a catch-up service – or wait until the season is over to binge-watch so that they don’t have to wait a week between episodes.

And gone are the days when the online services simply offered old shows that had already been seen on traditional channels. Just five years ago, few would have predicted that Netflix and Amazon would be taking home Emmys by the armful and challenging the big international TV networks, such as NBC, ABC, Fox and the BBC, and cable-TV heavyweights such as HBO and AMC. Netflix is even tipped to win an Oscar for African war drama Beasts of No Nation, its first original feature film.

The greatest proponents of on-demand viewing proclaim that the new formats will eventually kill off traditional broadcasters. Even allowing for the great inroads they have made in recent years, that seems a little extreme.

Flagship live events such as big sporting events or breaking news, for example, are not things most viewers would choose to watch on catch-up, while the eagerly anticipated premiere of a blockbuster movie or hyped series will continue to draw viewers, whoever owns the rights to the first screening – at least for the forseeable future.

“Irrespective of the platform, what matters is the content offered,” says OSN’s head of digital, Emad Morcos. “People do not look for online platforms to watch content that is already available on sites such as YouTube or relayed on free-to-air channels. They demand exclusivity.”

Even the most optimistic industry estimates put global TV revenue from online services at just five per cent of the overall total, though it is certainly growing. And just as TV did not kill cinema, and kindle didn’t kill printed books, the new TV platforms seem likely to enhance, rather than replace, the traditional options.

What also seems likely in an increasingly saturated market is that eventually only a couple of online platforms will remain globally, with regional franchises or independents fleshing out the field. Here are some of the current contenders that are popular with viewers in the Middle East.

• OSN Play and OSN Go

Perhaps unsurprisingly as the region’s biggest pay-TV provider, OSN was the first out of the blocks for online streaming when it launched OSN Play in 2012. The Play service offered existing subscribers thousands of hours of on demand content, as well as access to 18 live streaming channels from the OSN stable.

Two years later, OSN launched OSN Go, a standalone service offering blockbuster movies, series and box sets, in English and Arabic, on a range of devices for a $10 a month subscription fee. The channel currently holds exclusive online distribution rights for a number of shows that it currently premieres on its traditional TV service. Top series picks include Breaking Bad and Madmen.

Emad Morcos, OSN’s senior VP for development and digital, notes: “Our strength is the choice of exclusive and premium content that we offer – and is available nowhere else. We have signed long-term deals with content providers for movies, series and general entertainment for first-and exclusive access that will cement our pole position in premium content. We keep on adding new services and new content to the platform, such as the WWE Network and HBO series, exclusively, to the satisfaction of our subscribers.”

• Starz Play

Starz Play Arabia is the regional online streaming arm of the US Starz Networks, and the Middle East franchise, launched in 17 countries last year, is one of the first global streaming enterprises to offer a tailored version to viewers in the region.

Starz features a host of movies and TV series, many on an exclusive or first showing basis. The platform unsurprisingly has exclusive rights to premiere shows from the region from the parent Starz Networks, meaning that shows like Ash vs The Evil Dead can be watched here first at the same time as they broadcast in the US. Among the new shows to watch out for in 2016 are Netflix-funded, Eli Roth produced horror series Hemlock Grove.

The platform currently hosts of 4,000 hours of movie and series viewing, with easily activated Arabic subtitles and can be viewed on a host of devices, including existing Humax set top boxes, alongside the usual array of phones, laptops and tablets. Subscriptions cost approx US$7.99 a month, with no contractual tie in, and allows subscribers to watch Starz Play on up to five different devices. Starz Play is currently offering a seven-day free trial to new subscribers.

• icflix

Homegrown icflix is probably familiar to readers thanks to an extensive marketing campaign that seemed to take over half of the UAE’s billboards following the service’s launch in 2013. Like its competitors, icflix offers numerous movies and series from Hollywood, Bollywood and the Arab world, with content available in Arabic, English and French. icflix is particularly strong on Arabic content, and where it really stands out is with its in-house Arabic productions, including both feature films and series. A spokesman says: “We house the largest Arabic library online as well as having started our own original productions to help enhance Arab content production. We allow users to binge-watch, creating a more intense experience and deeper connection to a show and with original drama being exclusive means Icflix is the only place a viewer can access every episode of the show or watch original icflix feature films.”

Original productions for 2016 include Burn Out, directed by Noureddine Lakhmari; TV series Come Back and Familia, and Borders of Heaven, directed by Fares Naanaa. The streaming service's first in-house productions were 2014's HIV and Makida.

Icflix offers two subscription options – the free, Freemium Account which gives users access to select free Jazwood (Arabic) TV series, select Bollywood movies and select documentaries, or the 29AED (US$7.99) a month Premium Account which offers access to all of the sites content and exclusives.

• Netflix

The daddy of the streaming services. Netflix doesn't have a regional service yet, though that hasn't stopped thousands of viewers in the region from using VPN services to access either the US or UK versions of the service. Netflix's VP for communictions Joris Evers confirmed to The National in December that the service would be launching a regional platform by the end of 2016, which immediately had TV and movie fans in a frenzy of excitement.

Surprisingly, however, Evers seemed keen to play down expectations, noting that as a relatively late comer to the regional market, it would not hold local rights to many of the shows or movies it premieres in other markets. Netflix does have a tactic to address this however, and is dramatically ramping up its in-house production, which has already created award winners like House of Cards and Orange is the New Black. Evers told us: "Next year we'll be doubling the number of shows we produce, to more than 30, as well as the films we have in production [including the Brad Pitt movie War Machine, which was partly shot in Abu Dhabi last year]." Netflix currently has 10 feature films, 30 children's series, about a dozen feature documentaries, 10 stand-up comedy specials and two documentary series in various stages of production.

A further pull for local audiences could be Evers’ hint that local productions are a “high possibility” in future, a suggestion that was repeated a few days later by Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos during a panel at Dubai International Film Festival. “What’s missing on the global stage is a really great scripted series about contemporary life in the Middle East,” Sarandos told the Diff audience via Skype from LA. “Most depictions outside of the Middle East are either historical or portray caricatures of what life in the Middle East would be.”

Whether this will be enough to lure Middle Eastern viewers away from their VPNs and the more established, and more content-heavy, US and UK versions remains to be seen, and we’ll be watching with interest following the launch.

• Amazon

Like Netflix, Amazon does not currently operate a Middle Eastern service. In fact the online retailer’s Amazon Instant Video Service is only available in full in the USA, with limited versions also available in the UK and Germany.

Also like Netflix, that hasn't stopped viewers turning to their VPNs in order to watch shows like the Emmy-winning Transparent. Last weekend, in a further challenge to Netflix, Amazon chief Jeff Bezos told German daily Die Welt that the company is to produce 16 feature films a year: "We want to win an Oscar," Bezos added. Amazon has invested heavily in boosting its video content recently, both in TV series and now in cinema. Bezos also said that he is mulling acquiring the rights to rebroadcast world football championships such as the English Premier League and Germany's Bundesliga. www.amazon.com

• Eros Now

It’s no surprise to find Bollywood getting in on the action too. Eros Now is the online streaming arm of Mumbai-based film producer and distributor Eros International, and allows subscribers to watch movies from the parent company’s huge library of over 2,000 movies, as well as a further 700 films for watch it has acquired digital rights. The site also offers a selection of TV shows and music. Premium subscriptions to Eros Now costs the seemingly standard US$7.99 a month, while a limited free service is also available.

• Apple TV

Unlike traditional streaming services, Apple TV uses apps to provide subscribers with the content they require. Users buy an Apple TV set top box, and this streams content to their TV. Users can stream content from supported apps including Major League Baseball TV and Bloomberg TV, as well as streaming movies and shows from iTunes - the iTunes Middle East site currently has a vast library of both English and Arabic content, with the Arabic content particularly enhanced by regional aggregator Front Row Entertainment’s partnership with the Kuwaiti National Cinema Company.

• Hulu

Another US-only offering, but again popular with the VPN set. Hulu offers a range of packages from the ever-popular US$7.99 a month, and the cost of packages dictates the amount of content users can access, and the number of ads they receive. Shareholders in Hulu include Disney, Fox and NBC, so it’s no surprise that the content is fairly extensive, particularly when deals with the likes of Showtime and the BBC are added into the equation. Like its main US competitors, Hulu has also entered into in-house production, though unlike Amazon and Netflix, its original content is heavily skewed towards magazine and chat-style shows as well as reality formats.

• Multi Channel Networks

An alternative to traditional subscription-based online platforms is the Multi-Channel Network (MCN), which uses an existing platform (commonly YouTube) to manage other people’s (and in some cases home grown too) content. Egypt-based Diwan, founded in 2010, is the largest of these in the region – it was the first MCN to pass both the 1M and 2M subscriber milestones, and as of April this year was the only Middle Eastern MCN to feature in the world’s top 50. It counts Bassem Youssef’s Al Bernameg among its most popular exclusive content.

Diwan CEO Ossama Youssef says: “In some countries, digital consumption is already competing with the linear TV industry. In MENA, however, TV is still taking the lead but the scale is slowly moving towards digital. This is evident in the budgets of media spending by brands. When we started in 2010 the digital budget was as low as 5 per cent of the total media budgets. Today, many key brands reached the level of 30 per cent for digital. Actually, a big brand like Coke decided to spend the entire marketing budget in the high season of Ramadan just on digital. I believe the future is for digital media, but the process here in MENA might take some more time compared to how digital evolved in mature markets like the US.”