Rakuten TV Launches its AVOD Service in Europe
15.10.2019 11:30:00 EEST | Business Wire | Press release
Rakuten TV, one of the leading video-on-demand platforms in Europe, today announced the launch of its first AVOD - ad-supported video-on-demand - channels within the platform. This new business model will allow viewers to watch a wide range of content for free.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191015005048/en/
Rakuten TV's new UI 4.0 including "Free" section (Photo: Rakuten TV)
The free section of Rakuten TV will launch with an initial offer including Hollywood and local content to be expanded to additionally include exclusive Rakuten content, TV series, documentary series, news and sport channels in the coming months - with a combined linear and on-demand offer.
Among the exclusive content, Rakuten TV will present on its AVOD channel Matchday - Inside FC Barcelona, the new documentary series about FC Barcelona from the inside, offering previously unseen and exclusive scenes from the players’ private lives. Narrated by John Malkovich, Matchday – Inside FC Barcelona is a creation of Barça Studios, FC Barcelona’s own production house, in collaboration with Kosmos Studios, Rakuten, Inc. in association with Rakuten H Collective Studio and Producciones del Barrio.
Expanding its business model proposition, Rakuten TV will be the first to combine TVOD and AVOD products across Europe, meeting the changing needs of viewers. The free ad-supported channels will enrich the original proposition of Rakuten TV - Your Cinema at Home - offering Smart TV viewers the best cinematic experience with the latest new releases in the best audiovisual quality. Thanks to the presence of a remote control button providing direct access to the app on major Smart TVs, Rakuten TV content will be just a click away for over 30 million households across Europe.
In a time when the streaming industry is increasingly changing and exploring avenues such as AVOD, Rakuten TV is proud to pioneer this trend in Europe as the main VOD platform combining different business models - TVOD, AVOD and SVOD - which are oriented around meeting all audience needs.
Jacinto Roca, Rakuten TV Founder and CEO, stated: “We are incredibly proud to take this step after having tripled our presence in Europe just a few months ago. Rakuten TV continues to evolve rapidly alongside consumer trends within the industry, where there is a clear trend of advertisers moving away from linear TV and towards VOD. This is a unique opportunity for Rakuten TV which has already direct access to millions of European households through its branded remote control button of the main Smart TV brands. This is the mere beginning of a huge project which will see the launch of additional channels and exclusive content in the coming months”.
The service will be available in beta version, across the complete 2019 SMART TV line up, and will be progressively rolled out in other platforms including mobile and desktop.
Advertising sales will be managed by Rakuten Marketing, a subsidiary of Rakuten Inc. Nick Stamos, Rakuten Marketing CEO, stated: “Advertisers and agencies are eager to be among the first to showcase their brands in this exclusive and groundbreaking advertising platform. As VOD is emerging as a powerful media channel, our clients have been anticipating this launch from RakutenTV, so we are very excited to bring this new proposition to market across Europe.”
Rakuten Viber, Rakuten’s instant messaging service, will also be involved in the project, leveraging its community of 2 million Barça fans to promote Matchday.
Nielsen will be the data partner (DMP-data management platform) used to target advertisements at a digital level
This news comes alongside a renewed platform design for Rakuten TV, with a more attractive look & feel, a more intuitive user interface and a simpler user journey. Within the new interface, viewers will discover the new channel offering featuring ad-supported content inside the ‘free’ section implemented within the header menu.
The announcement took place during the conference “AVOD on the Rise” at MIPCOM 2019, where Founder and CEO of Rakuten TV, Jacinto Roca, spoke about the AVOD industry and its evolution with other top players in the entertainment field.
Rakuten TV
Rakuten TV is one of the leading Video On-Demand platforms in Europe. It offers a TVOD service (Transactional VOD) providing viewers a true cinematic experience with the latest new releases in the best audiovisual quality. It also includes an AVOD (Advertising VOD) section, Rakuten TV Free, in a blend of thematic channels embracing Hollywood classics, local, exclusive and themed content, all for free.
Rakuten TV is available in 42 countries and forms part of Rakuten, Inc., one of the world’s leading internet services companies, offering a wide variety of services for consumers and businesses, with a focus on e-commerce, fintech and digital content. Rakuten, headquartered in Japan, is also known for its partnerships with FC Barcelona, the NBA, the Golden State Warriors, Davis Cup and Spartan Race.
To view this piece of content from cts.businesswire.com, please give your consent at the top of this page.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191015005048/en/
Contact information
Media Contacts:
For further information please contact:
Premier PR – Rakuten TV
Charlie Wainwright - Premier PR on behalf of Rakuten TV
charlie.wainwright@premiercomms.com
0207 292 7372
Rakuten TV
Fabiana Cumia – Communication Director – fabiana.cumia@rakuten.com
Iraia Arza – PR & Communication Specialist – iraia.arza@rakuten.com
About Business Wire
For more than 50 years, Business Wire has been the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure.
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
Robbyant Upgrades and Open-Sources LingBot-VLA 2.0 as a Next-Generation Universal Brain for Embodied AI8.7.2026 11:11:00 EEST | Press release
Robbyant, an embodied AI company within Ant Group, today announced the upgrade and open-source release of LingBot-VLA 2.0. Building upon the foundation of LingBot-VLA 1.0 released in January 2026, this next-generation vision-language-action (VLA) model delivers significant leaps in morphological generalization, degrees of freedom (DoF) support, and deployment efficiency, delivering a more advanced “universal brain” for scalable real-world robotics. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260707394646/en/ LingBot-VLA 2.0 supports a wide range of robot morphologies While the embodied AI industry is witnessing rapid advancements in hardware and control systems, the lack of a truly universal brain remains a primary bottleneck for industrial-scale deployment. LingBot-VLA 2.0 addresses this critical gap by dramatically expanding its pre-training data and architectural capabilities. LingBot-VLA 2.0 was pre-trained on 60,000
TetraMem and SK hynix Showcase Successful Technology Collaboration Advancing Memory-Centric AI Computing8.7.2026 11:06:00 EEST | Press release
TetraMem Inc., a leader in Analog In-Memory Computing (A-IMC) technology, and SK hynix Inc., a global leader in AI memory and semiconductor technologies, today announced the successful completion of a joint technology collaboration, highlighted by the publication of their research paper, “A Memristor-based In-Memory Computing SoC with Efficient Depthwise Convolution,” in Advanced Intelligent Systems. The work has also been selected as the cover feature of the journal, recognizing its technical innovation and potential impact on next-generation AI computing. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260708244132/en/ The collaboration brings together SK hynix’s expertise in advanced memory technologies and TetraMem's Analog In-Memory Computing platform to explore new computing architectures capable of addressing one of artificial intelligence's most pressing challenges: reducing the energy consumption and thermal limitati
NetApp Named Presenting Partner of 2026 NFL Madrid Game8.7.2026 11:00:00 EEST | Press release
The NFL today announced that the league’s Global Partner, NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP), the Intelligent Data Infrastructure company, will return as Presenting Partner of the 2026 NFL Madrid Game, featuring the Atlanta Falcons taking on the Cincinnati Bengals at the Bernabéu Stadium — home to Real Madrid C.F. — on Sunday, Nov. 8. The multi-year announcement builds on NetApp’s role as the league’s Official Intelligent Data Infrastructure Partner and Presenting Partner of the inaugural NFL Madrid Game in 2025 and continues the company’s support of the league’s international games. “We are delighted to welcome NetApp back as Presenting Partner of the NFL Madrid Game,” said Rafa De Los Santos, country manager of NFL Spain. “Last year’s game at the Bernabéu was a landmark moment for the NFL in Spain, and with the Falcons and Bengals bringing two of the most exciting teams in football to Madrid this November, we look forward to working with NetApp to deliver another unforgettable experience for our
Vultr and SUSE Launch Validated Full-Stack NVIDIA Enterprise AI Platform to Accelerate Production Deployments8.7.2026 11:00:00 EEST | Press release
Vultr, the world's largest privately-held cloud infrastructure company, today announced the launch of SUSE AI Factory with NVIDIA on Vultr infrastructure, developed in partnership with SUSE. Announced alongside SUSE at the RAISE Summit in Paris, this validated, full-stack enterprise AI platform combines enterprise-grade AI software, advanced GPU acceleration, and global AI infrastructure into a single, production-ready solution. As organizations look to move AI workloads from experimentation into production, this joint solution eliminates the complexity of building AI stacks from scratch, allowing enterprises to deploy secure, scalable AI applications with ease. The solution combines software and infrastructure capabilities to help organizations securely and reliably advance applications from sandbox development to global production. Built on an open, Kubernetes-based architecture, the solution supports deployment across cloud, on-premises, edge and sovereign environments. The architec
MSIG Europe Selects Clearwater Analytics to Modernize Investment Operations8.7.2026 11:00:00 EEST | Press release
Clearwater Analytics today announced that MSIG Europe, a wholly owned subsidiary of MS&AD Insurance Group, has selected the Clearwater platform to modernize its operating model, unify data across the investment lifecycle, and meet the demands of the European regulatory environment, including Belgian GAAP, IFRS and Solvency II. European insurers are navigating the convergence of tightening regulatory demands, growing allocations to private markets, and the operational limits of fragmented legacy systems. The firms moving fastest are consolidating onto platforms that deliver daily accuracy, compliance automation, and integrated analytics at scale. MSIG is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance and a member of the MS&AD Insurance Group, one of Asia’s leading non-life insurance brands with a presence in 50 countries and regions globally. MSIG’s Asia office along with many of the business units have already successfully implemented Clearwater. MSIG Europe will now use Clearw
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom