ITV And The BBC's BritBox Is Latest Competitor In Intensifying Global Streaming War
The United Kingdom is now joining the global streaming wars with the launch of its own streaming service, BritBox. The service was created through a partnership between ITV and the BBC, which both launched the service in the UK on Thursday.
BritBox is competitively priced at just $7.70 per month and was also made available in Canada and the United States. The launch of the UK's own streaming service comes just a week after US competitors made their services available in the country. Netflix, Apple TV+, and Amazon Prime Video were all launched in the UK last week, all of which cost around $6.40 per month.
The entry of the UK's video streaming service is the latest addition to the growing list of global streaming services that are all trying to dominate the lucrative market. AT&T recently announced that it will soon be launching its own offering, called HBO Max, while Disney is set to launch its Disney+ service globally in the next few weeks.
Unlike its competitors, BritBox hopes to stand out of the crowd by offering British-centered content, which it hopes will appeal domestically and to Europeans living abroad. The service will offer UK-bases television shows such as Victoria and Gavin & Stacey. BritBox will also showcase classic UK television shows such as Poirot and Agatha Christie's Miss Marple.
Programs from the BBC, such as the series of The Great British Bake Off will be made available. One of its largest offerings will be episodes of Classic Doctor Who, where about 600 episodes were aired between 1963 and 1989.
ITV and the BBC announced in a joint statement that BritBox will essentially be offering customers the world's largest collection of British programming. The companies also revealed that they will be commissioning new programs from British production companies, which will be exclusively aired on the service.
BritBox will be majorly owned by ITV, which currently holds a 90 percent stake in the joint venture. BBC owns the rest of the 10 percent stake in the company, but it does have the option to increase its stake to 25 percent.
In the UK, Netflix is currently in the number one position when it comes to the total number of subscribers. As of the first quarter of 2019, Netflix reported that it had around 11.5 million paying subscribers in the UK. Around 14.3 million households in the UK still use pay-TV services such as Sky, but those households are slowly shifting to on-demand streaming services.
As of this year, close to half of all UK homes are subscribed to at least one major streaming service, including Netflix, NOW TV, and Amazon. The number of homes that are subscribed to more than one service is apparently also growing rapidly.