Sony has announced deals with several broadcasters to make their online TV services available via its PlayStation 3 (PS3) games console, including ITV, which becomes Sony's second broadcaster partner on the PS3 in the UK, following the BBC. Content from online catch-up service ITV Player can be accessed on Virgin Media's pay-TV VoD platform but the deal marks the first time ITV will make the service available over-the-top off the PC.
Finnish broadcaster YLE and regional Spanish broadcaster TV3 are extending their deals with the consumer electronics manufacturer; both already make their online catch-up services - Areena and 3alacarta - available via connected Sony TVs and Blu-ray players. In Australia, Yahoo7 - a joint venture between the portal and local broadcaster Seven Networks - will offer its online service Plus7 available on the console, as well as connected living room devices from Sony later this year under a previously announced deal. Meanwhile, Dutch news channel NOS is expanding its offering on the PS3 - it has been making select content available on the console since November 2009.
Sony has also agreed a deal with pay-TV anime channel Animax in Germany, leveraging ties with Sony Pictures Television International which has a stake in the network. Animax does not have a fully-fledged online TV service along the lines of the free catch-up services provided by the likes of ITV; it currently makes a limited amount of short-form content available online on a free-to-view basis. However, it is to offer select programming via the PS3 in Germany. Content from the channel is already available on the PS3 in the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia.
This is the second wave of online TV deals Sony has announced for the PS3: in November 2009 Sony added catch-up services from ABC in Australia and RTVE, Antena 3 and LaSexta in Spain among others.
Analysis
Sony's PS3 has moved ahead of Microsoft's Xbox 360 with its online TV offering in international territories. Both vendors have opted to aggregate online TV services rather than TV content outside of the US where they have agreed direct deals with studios and networks to offer TV shows on a digital retail basis in their consoles' native online stores (though they are also carrying third party services, such as Hulu Plus, in the US).
Sony has focused on ad-supported broadcaster services for the PS3, expanding its free-to-view video offering in an effort to broaden the appeal of the console as an entertainment platform and potentially to earn a share of the ad revenue generated. By contrast, the Xbox 360 carries services from pay TV operators - namely BSkyB, Canal Plus and Foxtel - which offer content behind a pay wall with Microsoft restricting access to the likes of Sky Player to users paying for access to Xbox Live Gold, its premium online layer, to help up-sell the subscription.
Sony recently adopted a similar premium tier for the PS3 - PlayStation Plus - but there is no indication that access to the ad-supported broadcaster services it is offering in international markets will be limited to users paying for PlayStation Plus. At this point, for Sony, maximizing the audience of the broadcaster services and its potential share of associated ad revenue is clearly a greater opportunity than any gains it might see in its nascent subscription service were it to restrict access to top tier users.
Besides, the participation of the broadcasters will have been secured on the basis that the PS3 will provide significant reach extension for their ad-supported services, beyond the PC. According to the BBC, in June 2010 iPlayer views on the PS3 totalled 5m, accounting for 4% of consumption for the month. Screen Digest analysis of comScore data indicates that this would equate to 40% of average monthly long-form free-to-view consumption for ITV.
The latter will hope that the availability of its shows on PS3 will drive consumption of its ad-supported TV shows closer to iPlayer levels. ITV is more aggressively monetising its content online than fellow commercial broadcasters Channel Four or Channel Five, having twice as many in-stream ads on ITV Player as on 4oD and Demand Five, but has been slower to extend reach. Both Four and Five are leveraging their catch-up content on YouTube and Five is also offering Demand Five on connected TVs and Blu-ray players from Sony. All three remain a long way behind the BBC which has built more than 25 different ports of iPlayer to date, making it available via a range of living room devices including the Nintendo Wii, connected TVs and Blu-ray players, as well as various mobile phones.
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