Outdoor Sportsman Group, which owns brands including Outdoor Channel, Sportsman Channel and Guns & Ammo, said that its new SVOD service was an effort two years in the making. The company also disclosed that it developed its streaming platform in-house, and is working with vendors including Akamai for players, video and CDN services, and FLX Media for app development.
Perhaps most importantly, OSG believes its SVOD service could grow into a major source of revenue.
“In time, we think it can become a stand-alone business,” the company wrote in response to questions from FierceOnlineVideo. “We are very confident that our model will be successful in our outdoor space and could eventually become a template for other networks – big and small – to use and generate revenue by following what we are doing.”
OSG said its MOTV (short for MyOutdoorTV) is designed to be an international offering that “allows us to reach every single hunt/fish/shoot fan who has an internet connection in every International market.” The product was created under OSG CEO and President Jim Liberatore and Vice President and General Manager of World Fishing Network Sean Luxton. The current offering leverages a small core group of full-time OSG staffers, but the company noted that “it is safe to say that our entire company is involved one way or the other in this very important endeavor.”
Announced earlier this month, MOTV offers hunting, fishing and shooting content—“featuring the biggest names in outdoor TV, like Willie Robertson, Kevin VanDam, Lee & Tiffany, Jim Shockey and Pigman”—through a website and iOS and Android apps. It costs $9.99 a month or $99.99 a year.
Specifically, MOTV collects OSG’s content from its Outdoor Channel, Sportsman Channel and World Fishing Network television shows into programming in long and short form, recipes, tips and tricks, how-to instructional videos, as well as educational content. Interestingly, MOTV also leverages content from OSG’s magazine brands like Guns & Ammo, Game & Fish and In-Fisherman. “We created and own content for our linear television and integrated media assets, so we plan to utilize content from all our television, print and digital platforms,” the company said, adding that it plans to also livestream certain events.
As the company works to get its SVOD service off the ground, OSG said it plans to both expand its addressable customer base as well as its marketing to new customers. The company said it is working to expand the offering to devices like Roku, Apple TV and smart TVs, and that it’s marketing the service through its own media assets as well as potentially through paid advertiser Juba Plus.
And what of including MOTV on Amazon Channels? “We are working on many deals and will announce them when they are complete,” the company said. “Again, our goal is to complement our linear networks. All our deals are important to realize this goal.”
OSG’s MOTV is one of a large and growing number of niche SVOD services either from existing or new media endeavors. For example, Motor Trend jumped into the SVOD space in 2015 with vendors Kaltura and 3 Screen Solutions.
Perhaps one of the most successful niche SVOD offerings comes from the World Wrestling Entertainment, which announced that its WWE Network SVOD service—which costs $9.99 per month—counted fully 1.57 million paid subscribers at the end of its most recent quarter, including 1.16 million paid U.S. subscribers and 409,000 paid international subscribers.