Japanese tech giant Sony, owner of major TV and film production business Sony Pictures Entertainment, has been noted for its decision to stick to an “arms dealer” role in the streaming wars. While many other players in the TV and film space spun up their own streaming services in order to directly monetise the content they create, Sony declined to do so. It’s taken a few steps into the CTV world, via its anime-dedicated offering Crunchyroll and Sony Pictures Core, an on-demand service available on Sony-made TVs and smartphones. But generally, it’s preferred to remain a partner to other platforms, monetising its library by licensing it to third parties.
Now, the company is taking another step into the streaming space. Yesterday, the company launched ‘Live TV on PS5’, a new free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) service available on its PlayStation 5 games console. Live TV on PS5 is currently only available in the US, but Sony says it plans to expand the product to Canada and other regions in the future.
A crowded FAST lane
Sony describes the new offering as “a free ad-supported experience from Sony Pictures Television”, suggesting the platform is owned by the company’s TV production unit. But Live TV on PS5 will draw on content from a number of other production businesses, while many of Sony’s most popular series are seemingly absent, presumably due to existing deals with third-party platforms.
The new FAST platform will have more than 100 channels at launch. These include genre-themed channels for Sony-produced films, such as ‘Sony One Action Hits’ and ‘Sony One Horror Hits’, and channels dedicated to Sony-made TV series including Community and The Shield. But the service will also host content and channels from third parties including Lionsgate, Fox, NBCU, Bloomberg, Spotify, and A+E.
Since the offering hosts so much third-party content and is missing many of Sony’s own biggest productions, this launch doesn’t look like a step away from the arms dealer role for Sony Pictures Entertainment. Rather, it appears designed as a revenue booster for PlayStation.
Games consoles have made tentative steps towards positioning themselves as total entertainment hubs, rather than being solely dedicated to gaming. But over the last few years, the battle for control of the TV screen has heated up, as TV manufacturers, streaming sticks, and third-party operating systems have all jostled for position as the primary platform through which audiences interact with their TV sets. In many cases, these companies have built their own gaming hubs into their operating systems, in their efforts to become all-in-one entertainment hubs.
By launching its own FAST service, Sony may be looking to keep users locked into its own platform for a greater proportion of their TV set activity.
Live TV on PS5 will also bolster PlayStation’s ad business. Bringing ads into console gaming has proven tricky, as many gamers push back on the introduction of ads into expensive AAA games. While companies like Sony are able to run paid banner ads within their interfaces for endemic advertisers, it’s been harder to expand that business to a wider range of brands. This launch could help solve that problem.
But Live TV on PS5 enters a crowded market, with a number of established services offering similar or identical channels. Whether it’s an enticing enough proposition to win share from competing FAST products, several of which are owned by TV manufacturers and are deeply integrated into the TV’s native interface, remains to be seen.
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