It’s celebration time for StarzPlay, Netflix’s main rival in the Middle East. The startup announced earlier in the week that it had hit the million-subscriber milestone, which is undoubtedly a big leap towards the company’s objective of dominating the region’s fast-growing subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) market.
StarzPlay is currently available in 20 countries across the Middle East & North Africa, and Pakistan. The platform offers a total of 10,000 hours worth content, including Arabic TV series and Bollywood movies, with new content being added regularly.
With this latest development, StarzPlay is claiming to have secured the numero-uno spot in MENA both in terms of revenue and the number of subscribers.
The company’s internal assessment suggests that it controls nearly one-fourth of the net revenue generated by the region’s video-on-demand market, whereas almost one in three users using an SVOD service are subscribed to StarzPlay.
“It’s an exciting time for StarzPlay – particularly our reaching one million subscribers this year. We look forward to continuing to build on our success as we progress with our expansion plans across MENA into 2019 and beyond,” says Maaz Sheikh, co-founder, and CEO of StarzPlay.
Acknowledging that the SVOD space in the region is intensely competitive, Sheikh added that StarzPlay has “managed to differentiate our offering to the benefit of the customer through working closely with partner telecom providers to offer subscribers a payment method that does not rely only on online subscription, as well as by investing in world-class content that people want to watch and watch again.”
Launched in 2014, StarzPlay has thus far raised nearly $125 million in funding. If all goes as per plan, the startup hopes to become profitable starting this year.
