Belgian broadcasters DPG Media and Telenet, owners of respectively the VTM and SBS channels, announced the launch of their new streaming platform from September. The Streamz platform received competition clearance from the European Commission, allowing the new company to start work from 01 September.
The new venture is expected to develop a local, Flemish alternative to global streaming and VoD services. It replaces the previous venture Stievie, which DPG Media has been phasing out.
The joint venture brings together DPG's strength in Flemish fiction and digital development over the VTM Go platform with content and subscribers from Telenet, through SBS, the production house Woestijnvis and its Play VoD service. The Play platform already counts over 400,000 subscribers.
Further details on the content offering or business model for Streamz were not disclosed. A website allows interested viewers to sign up already for alerts.
The European Commission said the SVoD venture does not plan to include linear channels, and Streamz, Telenet and DPG Media will all buy their content individually, rather than pooling their efforts. As there are a number of strong alternative SVOD players on the market, the Commission did not see Streamz having a negative effect on competition. Furthermore, there is little incentive for the partners to exclude other players or withhold their content from other platforms.
