Trace Secures OTT Carriage Deal with YipTV

LONDON: Trace has signed a carriage agreement with U.S. OTT service YipTV that will see five thematic channels launch in early 2016.

The deal includes Trace Sport Stars, Trace Gospel, Trace Tropical, Trace Toca and Trace Africa. The launch of Trace Gospel, which focuses purely on Gospel music, in the U.S. comes less than a month after the channel premiered worldwide. Trace Sport Stars is a sports celebrity channel, while Trace Tropical is dedicated to Caribbean and Latino music, and Trace Toca focuses on Afro-Portuguese and Brazilian music. Trace Africa showcases African music.

Timothée Vidal, the VP of distribution at Trace, said, “This carriage deal demonstrates the appetite for multicultural audiences in the U.S. for the Trace channels. The launch of Trace Gospel, a music channel exclusively dedicated to gospel music, also gives a hint about the channel’s potential and positive reception in the U.S., a major market for the Gospel music genre. Due to Trace and YipTV’s shared audiences, partnering with YipTV has been a natural move for Trace.”

Michael Tribolet, the CEO of YipTV, added, “The addition of Trace programming nicely complements our current channel lineup as we’ve found music and religious content to be very popular among our subscribers.”