STREAMING SYNERGIES
Amazon India has accomplished the deal to amass assets of MX Player, including its app, and is combining it with its AVOD platform Amazon miniTV to create a brand new free streaming service called Amazon MX Player. The merged platform has over 250 million unique users in India, in accordance with Amazon.
The service offers original shows like “Aashram,” “Dharavi Bank” and “Campus Diaries,” in addition to Korean, Mandarin and Turkish shows dubbed in local languages. Users can access the service through mobile apps, Amazon’s shopping app, Prime Video, Fire TV and connected TVs.
MX Player began life as a cross-platform media player developed by South Korea’s J2 Interactive. In June 2018, Times Web, a part of India’s giant Times conglomerate acquired a controlling stake MX Player for $140 million and re-launched it as a video streamer. It hired former Eros Now COO Karan Bedi as CEO. The Amazon deal is considerably below that value, Variety understands.
Girish Prabhu, head of Amazon Promoting India, said that the mixture of MX Player’s reach with Amazon’s promoting technology would enable brands to “reach and deliver relevant promoting to a really large and engaged base across India.”
Bedi, now head of the brand new platform, said the merger would allow them to “offer high-quality entertainment and streaming experiences faster than we could have done independently, while continuing to maintain the service free.”
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Everyone TV, the org behind U.K. free streaming platform Freely, has struck a cope with Amazon Fire TV. The pact will see Freely integrated into Amazon Fire TV smart TVs and other Fire TV OS-enabled sets starting this fall. Freely, which debuted in April 2024, offers free live and on-demand content from the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 without requiring a dish or aerial. The platform will probably be available on Amazon’s Fire TV 2-Series and 4-Series, in addition to TCL and Panasonic models sporting Fire TV OS.
The move expands Freely’s reach, which already includes Hisense, Bush, Toshiba, and Panasonic TVs with TiVo OS. More smart TV and OS providers are expected to affix the roster.
