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When American telecom giant, AT&T, concluded a deal to combine its content unit—WarnerMedia, with Discovery, to herald the emergence of Hollywood’s biggest studio, with the sole aim to strategically position the conglomerate to compete with content behemoths like Netflix and Disney, it sent a subtle message to the world of entertainment that creative content was the new gold mines—next frontier, in need of explorers.
Netflix, Disney+, WarnerMedia, Amazon Prime, etc., have kept increasing their annual budgets on content developments, exploration, and dissemination, just to remain on top of the entertainment market by growing their subscribers’ bases. With a global subscriber base of 208 million, Netflix budgeted $17 billion to be expended on content in 2021 alone.
The joint estimated content expenditure of WarnerMedia’s HBO and HBO Max and Discovery+ in the last one year stood at $20 billion. With a combined subscribers base of 64 million and 15 million, respectively, its merger has strengthened it to compete favorably with the likes of Netflix—208 subscribers and Disney+—103 million viewers. This is the scramble for the control of entertainment contents industry; the streaming market.
Globacom, a leading telecommunications operator renowned for disrupting the market positively for the interest of consumers, is set to repeat this feat in online TV services. Its investments in the entertainment industry is proof of its passion for the youth-driven ecosystem. It is like coming to play a bigger role in familiar terrain. Glo, the first indigenous mobile operator that is credited to have quickened GSM deployment across the country, with its attendant opportunities and ease of doing business.
Globacom’s determination to put mobile phones in the hands of every willing Nigerian crashed the price of SIM cards. Its magic wand—per second billing (PSB), became the game changer and the last straw that broke the back of duopoly hitherto created by legacy operators, who held the belief that per-second billing was impossible. Globacom proved them wrong. In retrospect, no one should write a history of the nation’s telecom sojourn without giving Glo a prestigious position in the hall of fame.
Recently, Globacom celebrated its 18th anniversary. One of the highlights of the anniversary was the launch of its new app called GloTV. It is an innovative TV streaming service on Android, IOS apps, and the web for watching live linear TV, Video on Demand, and catch-up with premium content. GloTV is set to redefine the television landscape in the country, as it will beam quality content to mobile phones, laptops, and desktops of millions of subscribers in Nigeria and beyond.
Source: Thisday
