“Apple TV will offer its first local content television channel in Latin America, Esporte Interativo Plus, bringing it into competition with pay TV in the region’s tough sports market,” Tim Bradshaw reports for The Financial Times. “The offering of the Esporte Interativo Plus, whose programmes include soccer’s UEFA Champions League, is aimed at helping Apple TV penetrate one of the world’s fastest growing internet and pay TV markets.”
“‘It is the first local channel of Apple TV in Brazil and the first live sports channel,'” said Leonardo Lenz Cesar, vice-president and one of the founders of Esporte Interativo,” Bradshaw reports. “The television division became a billion dollar business, Apple’s chief executive Tim Cook said in February, as more US homes watched films on streaming devices such as the US company’s set-top box.”
“Aside from the European soccer leagues, Esporte Interativo is a 24-hour channel offering matches from Real Madrid, Barcelona, Chelsea and Milan as well as Olympic events and others,” Bradshaw reports. “‘Why is Apple doing this with us?’ said Sergio Lopes, another vice-president of Esporte Interativo. ‘Because since this app was launched on the iPhone it was the most profitable sports app that Apple has launched in Brazil.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: With an eyebrow raised, we reprint:
Perhaps Cook should consider bidding for and winning NFL Sunday Ticket away from Direct TV, buying rights to Premiere League and La Liga games, etc. and making them Apple TV exclusives. Go directly to the sports leagues with boatlods of cash. Maybe that’ll grease the wheels [with other content gatekeepers]. It’ll certainly move a bunch of Apple TV boxes around the world in short order. – MacDailyNews Take, May 6, 2014
This is how it starts. Apple always tests new features in outlier locales…
What could be better on Apple TV then listening to Latin American soccer matches and hearing them called like this:
Until Esporte Interativo is available on your localized Apple TV, try this. Download the iPhone app for Univision desportes. Use Airplay to show on Apple TV. No cable subscription or registration needed. I don’t live in North America, so YMMV.
You might remember this MDN tip:
http://macdailynews.com/tag/univision-deportes/
I wish for the option to watch NON-Localized content.
I understand that video rights are heavily Balkanized, so maybe Apple should secure rights on the Apple TV. I would gladly pay for a non-bundled selections of channels of my choosing.
American news and information programming tends strongly to cheerleading, self-censorship, parochialism and severe myopia. It would be nice to get the news with a clear perspective from outside the US to see the world through different eyes. CNN International in the US is not even the International feed anymore, they Americanize it.