Chase Brisbin Outlines Lionsgate’s FAST Strategy

Chase Brisbin, recently elevated to executive VP of international SVOD sales and head of global channels at Lionsgate, showcased how the independent studio is tapping into its extensive catalog in the FAST space.

Brisbin talked about Lionsgate’s FAST operations, which include the flagship MovieSphere channel, with World Screen’s Anna Carugati as day one of the FAST Festival came to a close. You can watch the session here.

Lionsgate began operating in AVOD a decade ago, Brisbin said, with its first FAST offering arriving in September 2020 with MovieSphere and expanding from there with services such as HerSphere, OuterSphere and Ebony TV, plus single-IP channels.

“We have looked at more genre programming. We do both multi-content and single-series IPs. We’ve also begun leaning into partnerships with existing brands that have a lot of awareness already and their own organic reach. We’re learning a lot about programming. We try not to look at just the top 10 percent because knowing that The Hunger Games is going to perform isn’t that hard. We try to see some of our more surprising performers; old films like An American Werewolf in London. Then, we also look at the bottom 20 percent to see what’s not performing at all. Maybe those need to be removed from that channel, used on a different channel or rested for a while. Refresh is important, but we’re also spending time and understanding dayparts. Can we repeat more often? Can we use it across our suite of channels? That’s still a space that we’re testing in.”

MovieSphere was the first FAST channel in the U.S. to be measured by Nielsen. “MovieSphere still remains the only global premium film channel offered by a major studio,” Brisbin said. “It seems fitting that it would be the first to bring more traditional linear metrics to this new space. Our research team believes that all ships will rise if we start to share a little bit more, collaborate a little bit more and standardize a little bit more. It gives us more granularity to that programming piece. It fills in their gaps. It helps us benchmark platforms. It also helps us get access to demographic information, which we don’t typically get from some of the platforms. This helps us see the bigger picture.”

Brisbin then talked about the international FAST opportunity for Lionsgate. “International has enormous growth potential. We know that monetization has been slower, both in the U.S. and abroad, than some of us would have hoped. But it’s coming. We want to make sure we don’t just have our foot in the door, but we’re really in there with local and global partners so that when we start seeing viewership and monetization grow, we’re going to be part of it.”

In the U.S., monetization continues to be a challenge in FAST, Brisbin said. “From an opportunity perspective, people are starting to pay more attention to what they’re paying for. Consumers are savvy and price-sensitive. That free space is something consumers are always going to look for. We need to grow our brands and our suite of channels so that people start recognizing what MovieSphere is and what Ebony TV is. We’ve got more launches coming this fall. Right now, we’re spending a lot of time making them look good. The graphics, the logos and the lower thirds so that people start to recognize where they are as a landing space and not just a place to flip through and find the movie that they like.”

FAST also presents a wealth of opportunities in markets where linear TV is still faring relatively well in comparison to the U.S. “A lot of these European countries have entrenched free-TV broadcasters. That means the viewership is slower to shift. The opportunity there is that they have massive audiences, infrastructure and ad sales teams. A big part of our strategy internationally is to partner with local players. In France, we work with TF1 and M6, starting off in the VOD space, but we also are exploring FAST. In countries like Australia, we have our FAST channels across every single broadcaster, with one exception. The fun part of international with the global CTV platforms is that they’re doing that race to all corners of the world that the SVODs did. We want to be right there with them.”