Russian Tricolor takes cinema OTT

Russian satellite operator Tricolour TV network has announced plans to launch a dedicated online cinema service this October. 

The St Petersburg based DTH platform operator is aiming to lead the online cinema market in the country within the next three years.

Claiming it wouldn’t be difficult, Tricolor deputy general director for strategic and operational marketing Andrew Nesterov said its audience is currently just over 12 million, with the new service set to be tested on 10,000 devices.

Speaking during a press conference last week, Nesterov did not reveal details of the investment in the project or the monetisation strategy, however, he did not rule out the use of several funding models, though these were not specified.

In addition, he said that the service would also be made available to non-Tricolor customers.

Nesterov said that Tricolor is negotiating with key filmmakers to start shooting original series.

According to the research of J’son and Partners Consulting, Tricolor TV leads HDTV broadcasting in Russia at 39.6% and was the Russian pioneer of ultra high definition (UHD) TV broadcasting. 

Broadcasting under the trademarks of Tricolor TV and Tricolor TV Siberia is carried out by the National Satellite Company. 

TMT Consulting reported that online cinema revenues from advertising in 2018 increased by 12.5% to 3.6 billion rubles, and from user payments 75.6%, to 7.9 billion rubles.

It was the largest market share of online cinemas in 2018, with a share of 34%. 

Last month, GoGoCinema inked a deal with Golden Screen Cinemas to roll out its cinematic on-demand experience by the end of 2019

GoGoCinema aims to rival Netflix with its cinematic OTT platform, the offering is designed to provide audiences a new opportunity to choose and customise their cinema experience as well as launching web-based booking app which uses crowdsourcing to fill seats in the cinema.

• Read more Cinema gets streaming deal with GoGo OTT platform