Antenna Hungária launches standalone OTT sports service

Antenna Hungária has launched its first standalone over-the-top (OTT) service, a subscription sports offering called MindiGO Sport.

Announcing the service at the OTTtv World Summit in London this morning, Antenna Hungaria’s director of broadcast and media services, Henrik Schneider, said that MindiGO Sport is designed to complement the large European sports broadcasters like Eurosport, and local players like the public broadcaster MTVA, with a niche offering of locally relevant content.

The service has taken the rights to broadcast live Hungarian basketball and ice hockey – content which did not previously receive weekly live coverage by the local national broadcasters.

It has also licensed the live feeds of 12 linear sports channels, offering a mixture of “lower profile” sports content like eSports, martial arts and non-Formula1 racing.

Channels included in the line-up include SPI International’s FightBox HD and Nautical Channel , a global TV broadcaster dedicated to nautical sports.

MindiGO Sport will also have second-screen capabilities, offering stats and additional content around sports fixtures that are broadcast on Hungarian TV, for instance local football.

Speaking to DTVE on the sidelines of the event, Schneider said that the launch of MindiGO Sport could be the precursor to more standalone OTT launches from Antenna.

“We are looking at additional projects on niche content areas, for instance culture, kids and expat programming,” said Schneider.

MindiGO Sport launches today after a year in development – time that was spent licensing sports rights and securing the offering’s content lineup. The MindiGO brand and technology are already used by Antenna for its MindiGO TV catch-up on demand service.

MindiGO Sport is available to viewers in Hungary online and as an app for iOS and Android and is priced at HUF1,490 (€4.78) per-month.