SPI International’s Haymi Behar

As chief marketing officer and chief digital officer at SPI International, Haymi Behar is focused on future business goals—encompassing digital, marketing, product, linear and more. He talks to World Screen about how the company has been expanding its digital distribution operations and the keys to achieving the goal of becoming the ultimate content hub for both audiences and distributors alike.

WS: How has SPI been growing in the digital space?
BEHAR: In line with our vision to cover the world with great entertainment, SPI seizes every opportunity in the digital space to provide our audiences and B2B partners with premium content across all platforms. There are three key ways in which we are expanding in the digital space. We have our own digital OTT platforms—FilmBox+, Dizi and Film1—that viewers can access as stand-alone apps or through operator integrations. We also deliver thousands of hours of on-demand content via branded corners to 50-plus operator partners globally. In addition, we have become a major aggregator for digital platforms such as Amazon Freevee (formerly IMDb TV), Samsung TV Plus, Pluto TV, Plex, Rakuten TV and more by bringing 20,000-plus hours of content through SVOD, TVOD and AVOD models.

WS: Tell me about the suite of SPI digital products and some recent improvements.
BEHAR: In the past year, we have expanded the subscriber base of all three of our OTT platforms—FilmBox+, Dizi and Film1—through new operator integrations, B2C subscriptions, marketplace partnerships and various brand collaborations in multiple territories. These products have integrated with over 40 operators in our key Central and Eastern European territories, with our revamped Film1 service having integrated with the majority of Dutch operators already. FilmBox and Dizi products are reaching hundreds of thousands of homes in the U.S. and across the globe also through our platform partners.

FilmBox+, the “Home of Good Movies,” is available worldwide and combines lean-back and lean-forward viewing experiences through a vast collection of hand-picked VOD content and live channels in 14 language versions. Within a year of its launch, FilmBox+ has already entered 1 million households globally and counting. We have integrated with many operators, including Vodafone and DIGI in Hungary, freeSAT in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Focus Sat in Romania and Türksat in Turkey, where the integrations were promoted extensively via social media and digital marketing activities, telesales operations, in-shop branding and email marketing campaigns—all of which helped increase our subscriber growth in both cases. Operator integration is crucial for our OTT platforms, and we support multiple models of integration, whichever works for our partners.

In addition, the Film1 digital service switched to a new, dynamic OTT infrastructure recently, and the revamped app has already integrated with a majority of the operators in the Netherlands, including Ziggo, Canal Digitaal, Online.nl, DELTA, Fiber, Tele2, Caiway, Breedband Helmond, Solcon, CAI Harderwijk, Plinq, SKV, Kabelnoord, Kabeltex, SKP and Trined, adding the rest in time.

The Film1 on-demand proposition is also available as a lightning app in Ziggo set-top boxes, integrated within the electronic programming guide among linear channels at channel 105, which comes right after the four Film1 linear channels. This allows viewers to experience the serendipity of stumbling onto good content while zapping or browsing through quality VOD content, all in one place. We have recently launched our new TV commercial series in the Netherlands that emphasizes the fact that choosing a film or series together with someone is not always a relaxing activity. The campaign urges audiences to “leave the drama to the real actors” on Film1, where there’s always a good movie to watch, hassle-free.

Our Dizi streaming service, which positions itself as the “Home of Good Stories,” is the ultimate destination for Turkish series enthusiasts worldwide. Recently, we launched Dizi across Comcast’s entertainment platforms, including Xfinity X1, Xfinity Flex and XClass TV, signifying our expansion in the U.S. Dizi is also available with Amazon Prime Video Channels in Spain and the Netherlands, with more launches coming soon.

In the first quarter of next year, we will deploy our SMART channels feature, which is like curated Spotify playlists for movies and series. These will be customizable and incorporate the human touch of our FilmBox editors that aims to optimize content discovery, something that automated recommendations are not adequately equipped to do as they tend to offer content based on the past version of the viewer.

WS: How has SPI gone about extending its digital distribution operations?
BEHAR: By leveraging our extensive experience in the TV and broadcasting industry, we value establishing and building relationships with our operator and platform partners. For example, we have a total of seven Prime Channels on Amazon across the U.S., U.K., Spain and the Netherlands, and we have increased our subscriber base by 82 percent in just a year.

We also have branded VOD corners that are integrated with over 50 key operators globally, with which we help our partners enrich and diversify their content selection for their audiences through the thousands of hours of quality on-demand content that we deliver to them every month.

WS: Is SPI exploring the FAST and AVOD space? What opportunities do you see there?
BEHAR: In many territories across the world, especially CEE, linear TV viewing keeps its vast viewership potential because viewers cherish the stress-free experience of zapping and stumbling onto something good to watch serendipitously, as opposed to wasting time choosing what to watch from an abundance of content and platforms. That’s why, for example, our FilmBox channel in the Czech Republic has been the leader of the pay-movie market for almost two years. This year we launched a second pay-TV channel in the Czech Republic, FilmBox Stars. We have also launched our first FilmBox channel in the Netherlands this year, where our channel provides a stress-free, lean-back entertainment experience that has no disruptive commercial breaks during the movies. It now reaches over 4 million homes in the country.

Having said that, there is an undeniable migration toward digital streaming, and many viewers consider watching ads a small price to pay when the service itself doesn’t require subscription fees. FASTs have a huge potential as they combine the best aspects of both types of content consumption, allowing viewers to tune into more of what they like.

In just a couple of years, we have managed to enter a majority of European countries, including the U.K. and the Netherlands, the U.S., Australia and LatAm with our FAST channel Filmstream through partnerships with Rakuten TV, Samsung TV Plus, Plex and more recently with TCL. Our Fashionstream channel is also available in Latin America with Pluto TV, and we are working on more rollouts for the first quarter of the new year.

We have also launched the Filmstream channel on YouTube in Poland and Turkey, streaming twice per week full-length movies from the SPI content library. We’ve already reached over 25,000 subscribers, and the content within Filmstream Poland reached over 1 million views in just a few months. Next year we are planning to roll out more Youtube channels in multiple territories across the globe.

WS: As you look ahead, what are the areas of focus for the digital business?
BEHAR: SPI’s overall goal is to become the ultimate content hub for both audiences and distributors alike by investing in content that travels and is timeless through strategic alliances with key companies in the industry.  Though streaming services consumption is increasing globally, pay TV is not going anywhere anytime soon. The future of TV will remain hybrid for the foreseeable future as AVOD and SVOD propositions are increasingly bundled together, enabled by mediatech, to offer a combination of lean-back and lean-forward viewing experiences to attract a wider audience. For example, one of our goals for next year is to introduce an ad-supported tier for FilmBox+ in select territories so that budget-conscious viewers who do not mind watching ads can also have easy access to great content.

As pay-TV operators continue to look for ways to become super aggregators—offering content through linear channels, digital services and VOD corners—we will support them with our multiple content solutions to help them build a great TV product. We will also continue to expand our partnerships with digital platforms to make sure our content reaches more viewers globally through TVOD, SVOD and AVOD models. We are also working on integrating our digital products with all of the operators that we work with, creating more added value for our B2B partners.