Univision’s Streaming Platform Plans

Pierluigi Gazzolo, Univision’s president and chief transformation officer, and Rodrigo Mazon, the executive VP and general manager of SVOD, talk to World Screen about the company’s forthcoming streaming service’s focus on original programming, relationships with talent and overserving Spanish-language viewers who have been underserved in the streaming world.

This week, Univision Communications announced it will launch a global streaming platform in 2022 in Latin America and the U.S., focused on Spanish-language programming. Earlier this year, Univision revealed it was merging its media, content and production assets with Televisa. The upcoming streaming service, which will have AVOD and SVOD options, will combine the best of Univision’s existing nonlinear offerings with Televisa’s sizable library and IP.

WS: Tell us about this global streaming service and how it came about.
GAZZOLO: It started when Univision signed the deal for a transaction with Televisa, SoftBank and Google. SoftBank and Google are growth companies, and the combination pointed to the fact that we have the ability to take on what we consider to be the last streaming lane, which is a global Spanish-language streaming service. I am extremely excited, and with Rodrigo coming on board, we have the capability from a content perspective to be the largest Spanish-language streamer in the world.

The global streaming market has very good original Spanish-language offerings, but if you add them all up, Spanish-language content is a very low percentage of the global offering. In our case, it would be the great majority of the offering. We will always have more original Spanish-language content than anyone else. It will range from more than 30 original premieres to an expansive library with access, post-transaction, to Televisa’s amazing IP and gigantic production machine as well. We are going to focus on third parties and want to invite the creative community to come and talk to us; our doors are open. But we will also have access to 300,000 hours of library and at least 20,000 hours a year of production and capabilities coming out of Televisa.

It’s very exciting. Rodrigo Mazon completes our dream team and leads the SVOD portion of the product and all its parts, from content to growth. Rafael Urbina-Quintero was the head of VIX, which we acquired, and he will lead the AVOD portion of the product. Michael Cerdá, a talented product and tech person from The Walt Disney Company, will lead the product creation and development of the engineering for the platform for both SVOD and AVOD. Little by little, we are building an amazing team. As you saw in the announcement, renowned content creators are already coming our way, including María Dueñas, Mario Vargas Llosa and Santiago Limon. Dueñas, a best-selling author, recently of the novel El tiempo entre costuras [The Time in Between], decided to do the first straight-to-series with us instead of just TV adaptations. That says a lot about how much creators believe in our service.

There is much more coming, which Rodrigo and I will announce later this year. The creative community is realizing that no one has taken the lead in Spanish-language original content for the subscription streaming world. We want to become the home for the best Spanish creators of premium quality content, both already known talent and up-and-coming.

WS: What do Univision and Televisa signify to creators, and what will you offer them that maybe they wouldn’t find someplace else?
GAZZOLO: When Spanish-language content is your mission rather than a second thought, the first thing we will offer talent is the ability to take creative [risks]. For established creators, who already know how to produce hit content, we want to give them creative freedom, acknowledge them and their importance for the Spanish-speaking population of the world, which is almost 600 million people. We keep forgetting that Spanish is the second most-spoken language after Mandarin Chinese. We want to give these creators the respect they deserve, just as Hollywood would give to non-Hispanic top talent.

Second, with Televisa, we will have access to very strong IP. There are a couple of projects I cannot yet talk about. Think of movies with Mariá Félix and Pedro Infante, big comedy series like La familia P. Luche and classic telenovelas that we can revamp into series. Talent will also have access to that library. And that library—of old and current titles—promises that we will launch with volume from day one.
MAZON: I would simply add that Univision in the U.S. and Televisa across Latin America and many other parts of the world are such iconic brands; they resonate with Latinos and Hispanics worldwide. That reach is incomparable to anything else out there. There is trust in those brands and a built-in following that spans generations. As Pier said, the massive, deep library has shows and movies that have been made that we can tap into, revamp or adapt. But we can also—and this will be part of the first phase of my job—dig into the vault to see what’s there that maybe never made it to the screen that is incredible and maybe we can bring to life again. Televisa’s talent relationships are incredibly deep. Anybody who is a creator, whether in film, television, music or art, wants to have exposure through these channels and now these streaming services. Those relationships are also a huge part of what we bring to the table that is unique and differentiated.
GAZZOLO: Our original content strategy for SVOD will include a hugely diverse genre mix. We want to go from the very glossy Hollywood-type series all the way to serialas, what we call a type of telenovelas. To Rodrigo’s point, there is IP in the vaults of both Univision and Televisa that hasn’t seen air. Or IP that aired that we can revamp into one of those genres. We want to cover everything from very premium drama to comedy to family—which by the way, comedy and family are very underserved on streaming services for Spanish-speaking audiences—to serielas.

WS: There has been much talk of the Covid-19 streaming bounce, with so many people at home watching so much more. What can you tell us about your audience, how much and what they have been streaming? What opportunities do you see to increase this viewership?
MAZON: In many ways, Covid put in overdrive the streaming tendencies and adoption across the world. I can tell you that in Latin America and among Hispanics in the U.S., we are such fans of all kinds of content and watch and consume and stream much more than every other demo. The data also probably holds with respect to traditional channels, but certainly, across the streaming space, this is a massive community that streams across all genres and probably more hours per day, or however you want to measure it, than any other group. It cuts across all generations because often in households, you have very young children and older adults and everything in between. They are watching everything from the broad family category, which is four-quadrant if you will—that is a very attractive space and in streaming is one that has yet to take off—to genre, be that horror, sci-fi, action, thrillers and then, of course, your dramas and comedies. It is truly a unique opportunity, and this streaming service and brand will be so tailored to that audience; it’s what gave me the confidence, in addition, of course, to Wade [Davis, CEO of Univision Communications] convincing me to come over and do this.

WS: Your service will have both an AVOD and SVOD offering to accommodate all budgets.
GAZZOLO: Yes. First, if you look at the Spanish-speaking audience in the U.S., 78 percent of Hispanic viewers stream, compared to 65 percent non-Hispanic, and when I say stream, I mean AVOD and SVOD.

Second, Latin American viewers consume a lot of long-form content on mobile, much more than anyone else. I think only certain markets in Asia are comparable. The reason why I love how we’re doing this is that we are going with two offerings. The free portion of the product will be the entry point. Latin Americans love to consume on mobile, and we plan on having a lot of great content that can be watched on a mobile platform. That will be the funnel to take them up to SVOD. We’re not talking pricing strategies yet, but I can tell you that we will have different variations of pricing in the subscription models to adapt to the realities of each of the markets we are going to and ensure that the pricing is competitive and in line with what people can afford. In Latin America, people keep saying only certain people can buy cable. But if you think of the SVOD revolution and stacking and how people are managing share of wallet, all these SVOD providers are in single digits per month. We plan to be even below the average pricing in the region.

We will be very aggressive in pricing, but we are also going to use the free funnel because the AVOD tier will be like a broadcast experience. It will have much more sports. It will have a live news 24-hour channel and much better windows for the channels we want to show. That is what we believe will be one of the biggest funnels into subscriptions. The UEFA Euro tournament is on now and you cannot imagine the number of monthly active users that are coming in and staying. That will be our strategy to cope with the economic issues we may find in some markets.

WS: You mentioned the streaming service was an outgrowth of the Univision-Televisa transaction. Would you remind our readers why the combination took place?
GAZZOLO: It made sense for two companies that already had leadership in two of the most important Spanish-speaking markets in the world to create the largest Spanish-language content multimedia company, but most importantly, the largest streaming service for Spanish speakers worldwide. We want to overserve audiences that have been underserved for too long.