Virtual MVPD Vidgo this week launched VidgoMás, a new TV streaming plan aimed at Spanish-speakers.
The subscription plan is priced at $39.95 per month and features 42 live and on-demand Spanish-language channels. It’s delivering content from Univision and UniMás local broadcast stations, Estrella, Discovery Familias, Fox Deportes, among others.
It encompasses both Spanish and bilingual channels for sports, news and entertainment. The package includes 20 hours of free DVR viewing at no extra cost for the first 90 days.
The new plan is Vidgo’s latest effort to appeal to new and underserved customer segments.
In a statement, Vidgo CEO Derek Mattsson pointed to the large pool of Spanish speakers in the U.S.
“We aim to provide the best value to our growing and increasingly diverse audience,” commented Mattsson. “More than 53 million people speak Spanish in the U.S., yet these audiences are often overlooked. We could not be more excited to bring thousands of hours of popular Spanish-language content as we establish Vidgo as the go-to streaming destination for the Latino community.”
Vidgo also touted its new app, which can be accessed via Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Vizio, Apple TV, and on Android and iOS mobile devices and the web.
Earlier this year the company, which launched in 2018 positioned as a budget-friendly live TV service, made moves to attract cord-cutters in rural America. That included carrying around 80% of all college football games available on TV through programming partners Paramount Global, Fox, Disney and Pac 12 Networks.
In a September interview with Fierce, Mattsson said “our audience tends to be in rural areas of the country, so we’re trying to package our programing that is popular with that audience.”
With Wednesday’s launch of a new Spanish-language package, Vidgo also wants to make a name for itself with Latino viewers.
It comes other streaming services and content providers are also looking to attract Latino audiences with a growing plate of culturally relevant plans and programming. In September Adsmovil launched AVOD service Neustra.TV, aimed at bilingual and Hispanic audiences. Over the summer TelevisaUnvision’s debuted its premium ad-free Spanish-language subscription streaming service ViX+. Virtual MVPD YouTube TV added a Spanish-language TV package earlier this year, while Roku in June launched a dedicated hub called Espacio Latino that aggregates Spanish-focused programming on The Roku Channel.
The opportunity to reach Hispanic communities via streaming is large as recent data from Nielsen shows that while streaming consumption is rising in general, streaming TV’s share among Latinos significantly outpaces that of the general U.S. audience and all other ethnic groups reported.
For example, in July streaming captured a 34.8% share of total TV time in the U.S. That percentage grew notably when looking at Hispanic audiences only, with streaming accounting for 43.6% of total TV viewing in July 2022.
In addition to a larger share spent on streaming than other platforms, Latinos are also spending an increased amount of time with streaming video. According to Nielsen, Latinos streamed 33.5 billion minutes of video each week in July, marking an annual increase in impressions of 22%.
“The high engagement with streaming services reflects Latinos’ enjoyable streaming experience, the availability of a high volume of content that is either inclusive, in-language, or both,” Nielsen concluded.
Age is also a factor, as the average age for Latinos in the U.S. skews relatively younger.
Based on 2019 U.S. Census data, Nielsen pointed out that 58% of U.S. Hispanics are under 34 years old, while 31% are under 17. Comparatively, 42% of non-Hispanic Whites in the U.S. are under age 34.
“While younger viewers of all racial or ethnic backgrounds stream content in higher quantities, Latino’s relative youth is a significant contributor to the increase in time spent with streaming,” the analysis noted.