The Ukrainian online cinema SWEET.TV considers it necessary to increase the average bill for using OTT services in order to create the possibility of producing its own content.
As Director of SWEET.TV Oleksandr Rezunov said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine, the cost of an average tariff plan for OTT service in Ukraine today is within UAH 100 (about $3.5). This price includes royalties for broadcasting TV channels and films.
“In order to be able to generate their own content, Ukrainian platforms should increase their average check. Then they can afford to create original content for their money. Netflix, which does not have TV channels, costs $10. The high check helped the platform create a lot of original content, for which you do not need pay monthly royalties,” he said.
Netflix is also monetizing its content globally, Rezunov said. Meanwhile, Ukrainian producers can only rely on the territory of their country, since for the majority today it is a great success to sell content abroad.
“To summarize: the market should mature and emerge. Accordingly, if the market for pay TV and paid services is formed, more people will start paying, there will be less piracy, and the average check will grow. Then platforms will be able to afford to buy and produce their own content,” the director of SWEET.TV said.
About 10 million households in Ukraine use T2 digital air and pirated services, according to a study of the Ukrainian SWEET.TV online cinema.
“There are now about 10 million households in Ukraine that watch TV channels and films through free sources. These are T2 air and pirated services… In addition, there is a problem that Ukrainians, in principle, do not understand that they are using pirated services and viewing advertisements on such sites. It is equated to the legal purchase of content. Many do not even think that viewing content on pirate sites is illegal,” Director of SWEET.TV Oleksandr Rezunov said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.
According to him, when buying a new TV set, most Ukrainians do not even receive an offer to subscribe to a legal Internet TV service because almost half of the equipment is bought in small, local stores.
All this, in Rezunov’s opinion, greatly hinders the development of the pay TV market in the country.
“T2 broadcasts free channels of media groups that show expensive Hollywood content. At the same time, OTT services have to pay royalties for placing each channel and each unit of content on their platforms. This approach to filling T2 broadcasting significantly slows down the development of the paid content market. In the place of media groups, I would wonder whether it is worth broadcasting expensive content for free,” he said.
The director of SWEET.TV also said that pirated resources are funded mainly by advertisers and supported by consumer interest. This means that it is worth introducing responsibility for placing advertisements on pirated services, as well as responsibility for watching pirated videos – as it already works in most European countries and the United States.
According to him, in order to fight piracy, SWEET.TV became a member of the Clear Sky anti-piracy initiative, as well as a member of the supervisory board for media and communications of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine.
SWEET.TV is a Ukrainian OTT platform with more than 260 TV channels, including HD and 4K, products from Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks, etc.
The platform has direct contracts with Disney, Paramount, Universal, Sony and other international content producers for dubbing media products specifically for the territory of Ukraine, and not for the CIS. The service creates Ukrainian-language dubbing for cult Hollywood films in the Hollywood in Ukrainian project.
The cinema hall of the SWEET.TV national online cinema is supplemented with more than 100 films from Disney, Paramount and Sony. The service has direct contracts with film studios and regularly updates the film library with novelties, exclusive and extremely popular movies.
At the beginning of October, the SWEET.TV cinema was supplemented with more than 100 films. Among them are comedies, action films, thrillers, horror movies, those based on real events, and, of course, cartoons for children of all ages and the whole family.
Among the additions: “Mulan” (2020), the full trilogy “Cars”, “Jurassic World”, “Watchmen”, “Allied”, “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2”, “John Carter:”, “The Green Mile”, “Shrek”, “10 Cloverfield Lane”, “Tron: Legacy.”
The full list of movies can be found at the link.
It should be noted that the SWEET.TV cinema hall has a complete trilogy of the cartoon “Cars”. Ukrainian dubbing for the cartoon is considered extremely popular. It became the first film to be released in Ukrainian cinemas with Ukrainian dubbing.
In the “Cars” cartoon, Ukrainians also for the first time heard an example of successful adaptation of dubbing to the Ukrainian identity. The most striking example is a combine harvester named Valera. For the dubbing team, the localization of names was a controversial issue, but “Valera” still appeared in the final version and became popular.
In total, the service has another 10,000+ movies and 260+ TV channels, including HD and 4K, including 29 movies, where movies of various genres are broadcast 24/7.
It will be recalled that SWEET.TV creates exclusive Ukrainian-language dubbing and voice acting for Hollywood films, cartoons and TV series that were not previously featured in the Hollywood Ukraine project. During the year of the project’s existence, 180+ films and 850+ trailers received a new audio track.
Recently, the first two films “Spider-Man” starring Tobey Maguire received a Ukrainian sound.
For new subscribers, the national online cinema provides free access for 7 days. More details – at the link.
National online cinema SWEET.TV plans in 2021 to dub and voice over 50 films and 100 trailers in Ukrainian.
As director of SWEET.TV Oleksandr Rezunov said during a conference at the press center of Interfax-Ukraine, popularization of the Ukrainian language and Ukrainian-language content is the platform’s social mission.
“For us, Ukrainianization of cinema has long become the norm. That is why the ‘Hollywood in Ukrainian’ project was created – the main social project of SWEET.TV. Within its framework, we, at our own expense, implement Ukrainian dubbing and voicing of films, cartoons and TV series that have not previously been translated into Ukrainian. To implement this project, SWEET.TV became the first Ukrainian online cinema to enter into direct contracts with Hollywood film studios specifically for the territory of Ukraine, not the CIS,” he said.
According to Rezunov, during the year of the project’s existence, 181 films, cartoons and TV series received the Ukrainian-language audio track. Also, 829 trailers sounded in Ukrainian.
“By the end of 2021, we plan to dub and voice more than 50 films and more than 100 trailers. We also created our own Foundation for the Development of Ukrainian Cinema and Television, where we transfer UAH 10 from each paid connection to SWEET.TV. The collected funds are directed to the implementation of new projects of talented Ukrainian directors,” Rezunov said.
According to him, there are significant opportunities for the growth of OTT services in Ukraine: out of almost 15 million households in the country, only 4-4.5 million use pay TV services.
“Some 10 million Ukrainian households have never paid for television. They are the prospect for the development of the streaming services market, the so-called ‘growth zone’ for OTT companies,” the SWEET.TV director said.
SWEET.TV is a Ukrainian OTT platform with over 260 TV channels, including HD and 4K, as well as products from Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks, etc.
The platform has direct contracts with Disney, Paramount, Universal, Sony and other international content producers for dubbing media products specifically for the territory of Ukraine, and not for the CIS. The service creates Ukrainian-language dubbing for cult Hollywood films in the “Hollywood in Ukrainian” project.
National online cinema SWEET.TV stands for the introduction of liability for the population for the use of pirated content.
During a press conference at the press center of Interfax-Ukraine, SWEET.TV director Oleksandr Rezunov said that the operation of pirate services in Ukraine is still very active, which is primarily due to high demand from users.
“This issue requires a tough reaction from the state. And the introduction of liability for consumers of pirated content. Also, due to pirated sites, Ukrainian content producers lose millions of hryvnia. This leads to insufficient funding for future projects and reduces the quality of the content produced,” he said.
According to Rezunov, the issue of developing a mechanism for introducing such a penalty is on the side of the legislative branch.
“The size of the fine I would introduce is small, purely symbolic – about UAH 100. Why is this needed? Not to take money from consumers. The main problem of the market is that people do not always understand or forget that they are watching illegal content, and the industry loses from this, the state loses taxes, copyright holders lose royalties and cannot produce high-quality content. A purely symbolic fine would lead to the fact that a person remembered about it,” the SWEET.TV director said.
To combat piracy, SWEET.TV became a member of the Supervisory Board of the Media & Communication Committee of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine. In addition, the company is a member of the Clear Sky anti-piracy initiative.
The SWEET.TV director called the high activity of international broadcasting platforms another problem of the Ukrainian pay TV market.
“In Ukraine, it is necessary to introduce equal conditions for doing business. In particular, the requirements regarding language quotas are practically not applied to foreign media platforms. There is no practical implementation of tax norms – now the adopted regulatory legal acts introducing VAT payment by nonresidents who provide online media services simply do not work,” Rezunov said.
He also stressed that Russian streaming services available on the territory of Ukraine, in fact, violate Ukrainian legislation in terms of the unhindered broadcasting of content from Russian media that have come under sanctions.
SWEET.TV is a Ukrainian OTT platform with over 260 TV channels, including HD and 4K, as well as products from Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks, etc.
The platform has direct contracts with Disney, Paramount, Universal, Sony and other international content producers for dubbing media products specifically for the territory of Ukraine, and not for the CIS. The service creates Ukrainian-language dubbing for cult Hollywood films in the “Hollywood in Ukrainian” project.
