Wuaki.tv: ‘never say never’ to future SVOD moves

Transactional video-on-demand service Wuaki.tv has not ruled out moving to an SVOD model in more of its European markets, though would not comment on any current plans to do so.

Speaking at the OTTtv World Summit yesterday, Wuaki.tv’s European content director, Simon Homent, said that the company does “not yet” have a plan to replicate the subscription model it already operates in Spain.

“Spain is slightly different because we offer a subscription service in Spain, which has a whole different opportunity for us to carve out some niches,” said Homent.

“But in all of the 11 countries we’re currently in, [it’s] just a transactional model. Never say never to these kinds of things, but not yet.”

Asked whether Wuaki.tv would ever add live content to complement its on-demand offering, Homent said: “In the forseeable future no, but of course it is something that is being talked about quite a lot in the background.”

“There’s lots of different directions you could take the business in. For the time being we’re very much focused on the transactional models except for Spain.”

Rakuten-owned Wuaki.tv first launched in Spain in 2010 and added an SVOD proposition, Plan Premium, in July 2012.

The firm expanded SVOD to the UK in 2013 but dropped it shortly after as it focused instead on expanding its TVOD service to more European markets such as Germany and France.

However, Wuaki last year teamed with Lagardère kids channel Gulli to launch a Gulli-branded kids SVoD service in France, priced at €3.99 per month.

Speaking at the time of this deal, Wuaki.tv CEO Jacinto Roca said: “We are pretty confident that this type of partnerships are a successful model that can easily be replicated across other European countries.”