hayu Super-Serves Fans of Reality TV

Hendrik McDermott, managing director of hayu, talks to TV Real about NBCUniversal’s reality-TV SVOD service, which recently celebrated its five-year anniversary.

NBCUniversal’s reality-TV SVOD service hayu recently celebrated its five-year anniversary. Having first launched in Australia, the U.K. and Ireland in March 2016, hayu is now available in 27 territories globally, establishing itself as “the must-have SVOD service for fans of international reality TV,” says McDermott, managing director of hayu.

The service expanded its footprint to Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark in 2017, Canada and the Benelux in 2018, the Philippines, Hong Kong and Singapore in October 2019, and Germany and Austria in 2020. In February, hayu launched in Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Switzerland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. “In every market where hayu operates, we’ve pursued the dual goal of building the DTC business while simultaneously working with local partners,” McDermott says. “Because hayu is a unique, compelling service it appeals to a range of partners, helping them to retain subscribers, drive ARPU, attract new customers and address the need for increased triple and quad play.”

Having launched in Germany and Austria at the end of last year and recently extending into an additional 11 territories in Europe, the current focus is on growth in those markets, McDermott adds. “Beyond that, we continue to strengthen our presence in the rest of our hayu territories, both DTC and through a range of local partnerships.”

The on-demand service features more than 8,000 episodes of hit reality shows spanning across celebrity, lifestyle, home and design, dating, cooking and fashion as well as true crime. “NBCUniversal is a prolific, expert producer of reality content, providing a high-volume, top-quality pipeline of content for hayu,” says McDermott.

Additionally, hayu acquires unscripted content from third-party distributors. The content is curated both editorially by the hayu team as well as through recommendations, which are a mix of editorially and algorithmically selected programs.

“hayu is the only all-reality SVOD service, super-serving fans of unscripted, making it wholly, and uniquely, dedicated to a genre that no one else is serving,” McDermott says. “hayu’s breadth of content uniquely meets the demand of reality fans, and subscribers don’t have to worry about spoilers as the vast majority of U.S. shows are available on hayu the same day as their U.S. broadcast. The service also boasts complete box sets allowing fans to catch up on almost every series from the very beginning.”

Within the ultra-competitive streaming landscape, hayu is positioned as an affordable genre offering; it can be complementary to the other on-demand services.

“We are continuing to focus on our dual goal of growing reach and distribution both via building the DTC and by forging partnerships in each market—knowing that hayu is a compelling service that helps retain subscribers, drives ARPU, attracts new customers and addresses the need for increased triple and quad play,” says McDermott.

Multi-territory partnerships are in place with Amazon Prime Video Channels (the U.K., Canada, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, France, Spain and Italy) and Samsung Smart TVs (available in all 27 hayu territories). Market-specific partnerships include the U.K. (NOWTV), Australia (Fetch, Telstra), Canada (Telus, Shaw, Rogers, Cogego), Denmark (TV 2), Finland (C More), Norway (TV2) and Sweden (C More), among others.

A brand campaign is launching across the 27 hayu markets, and the plan is to increase the ongoing investment in content. “When it comes to that investment, we’re dedicated to super-serving our core audience with more of the glossy, character-driven content they love—while also looking for opportunities to diversify the offering,” McDermott says. “To that end, at the start of the year we added over 700 hours of new content licensed from ViacomCBS. We’re excited to welcome Love Island back to the platform in Canada this summer (where hayu is the exclusive home of the series). And, we recently launched the new series The Big Shot with Bethenny exclusively in the U.K., Ireland, Australia, the Nordics and the Netherlands—and we’re really pleased with the early numbers we’re seeing for that title.

“Further, we are evolving our user experience with ongoing technical investments and developments,” he adds.