Streaming 2.0 – Building the Middle East’s next digital powerhouses

Omdia’s 2025 forecast for the MENA region shows SVOD subscriptions topping 27m, with the streaming market expected to earn $1.5bn by the end of this year. With a large addressable base, how many untapped customers are there and how many are needed to be a digital powerhouse? In this hypercompetitive scenario, OTT leaders and strategists redefine monetisation models to build resilient platforms in one of the world’s fastest-growing digital markets.

The panel on building the Middle East’s next digital powerhouses at the ASBU BroadcastPro ME Summit in November was moderated by industry leader and media veteran Tracey Grant. It comprised Ahmed Qandil, Director of D2C Business – Shahid, MBC Group; James Walmsley, Director of Technology and Analytics, TOD; Jim Hall, Senior Sales Engineer, Fastly; Nisrine Ghazal, Vice President Digital, Rotana Media Services; and Samer Majzoub, General Manager, Viu MENA.

Despite recent research highlighting global subscription fatigue, consumer resistance to price rises and slowing growth in some markets, industry reports see huge growth potential in the MENA. While powerhouses are not created ad hoc, they are organisations that can work across different generations while maintaining momentum, disrupting markets and changing how people perceive media. This requires operators to be agile and transformative in this era of streaming 2.0, “as well as leveraging the latest and greatest intelligently, because it helps them achieve cost goals even at peak utilisation periods”, said Jim Hall, Senior Sales Engineer, Fastly.

Scale is inherently harder with platforms. Being able to maintain it in a challenging region in terms of application and production quality, and pushing forward through new product experiences and meaningful engagement with customers, adds value. “If we can communicate with customers better and provide better quality of service, if we can live up to that, we can call ourselves a powerhouse,” said James Walmsley, Director Technology, Analytics and Product, TOD.

To scale, operators employ different propositions. Grant began the conversation by asking what was working for the panel of architects and specialists from two sides of the ecosystem – SVOD, AVOD, hybrid and bundled collaborations, or integrating with each other to offer a one-stop streaming service.

Built to support a hybrid monetisation or dual-stream model, Viu brought its working prototype to this part of the world when the company moved to the Middle East in 2018, gaining access to a lot of users through the freemium model. Acquiring on the free layer and then converting has worked for Viu, and AVOD is part of that funnel on the B2C side, from acquisition through to retention.

“We built our content proposition on three main pillars,” said Samer Majzoub, GM, Viu MENA. “Thanks to our strong relations with the Korean studios in Southeast Asia, we brought and localised Korean content, which is our stronghold here. We are also a leading destination for Turkish content in the region, complemented by Arabic originals and co-productions.”

Building on what is supportive to the journey, working models reflect long-term monetisation mix strategies that are core to an organisation’s strategy. The history of the region shows it has never been a pay-TV market, with mass audiences always on free-to-air.

“But as we witnessed willingness to pay, we had to break certain notions, like willingness to pay for Arabic content,” said Ahmed Qandil, Director of D2C Business – Shahid, MBC Group. “Since we come at the back of a big broadcaster, we started as an AVOD service. When we elevated ourselves to see how people liked to consume their content, we were able to launch a successful SVOD service.”

In a nascent region, relationships with audiences play a key part. While the two models remain largely untapped, the difficulty lies in trying to operate across two tiers.

“Some play with ad-supported tiers or launch AVOD services with library content,” Qandil continued. “If you wish to be successful in both, you must take both seriously. In terms of investment and proposition, you need to know how to differentiate the offering to audiences. Otherwise, one will cannibalise the other, which typically happens, but you need to manage that to be more successful.”

Working a smart balance between AVOD and SVOD in the Middle East based on viewer behaviour, freemium accelerates growth and is a gateway into emerging markets. Free content has always shown high demand, but “the Premier League and World Cup are not going to be free any time soon”, Walmsley pointed out.

He continued: “But we are looking at ways to adjust our library, and if not for free, how about the Premier League a couple of days after the event or maybe highlights the next day? A lot of very active conversation and careful experimentation goes on within TOD, and we get to adopt a hybrid approach. If we want to achieve scale, then we’re going to have to adjust our offering to accommodate that. But as a predominantly premium sports provider, it’s difficult to see an immediate shift to freemium.”

For a lot of broadcasters, moving investments to the digital side after spending a long time in analogue can be daunting, especially when they lack the resources. Two years ago, when Rotana Media launched its premium video marketplace, the objective was to assist broadcasters lacking the resources, know-how or scale to compete in the digital world.

“We take that uncertainty away by helping monetise their inventory and providing ad solutions. Or if they have content, premium or archive, we create FAST channels and help them distribute those onto platforms and monetise on their behalf,” explained Nisrine Ghazal, Vice President Digital, Rotana Media.

Managing a premium video marketplace involves looking at trends in the market as well as digital ad spend, she went on. “According to IAB MENA, digital ad spend in 2024 was $6.95bn. Around 90% of that money goes to the big tech companies – social and search. We are left with $700m, and so we are working to support local broadcasters in capturing a part of that.”

This fragmentation sits under one marketplace that advertisers can tap into without having to reach out to every single broadcaster. Scale and monetisation on the European side is a confluence of the two, noted Hall, with freemium moving into subscription and premium moving into AVOD.

“It is different for each company and is based on diverse strategies and what each is essentially trying to achieve. Using every method available to achieve growth is entirely dependent on the nature of the enterprise. But I’m curious to see what happens with FAST here, because that has died in Europe. A lot of the issues faced in European countries have been the lack of interest and the cost for content providers to create FAST channels. I’m hopeful that it works here and am looking forward to seeing positive results.”

A recent Omdia report states that FAST in the region will grow from $12m in 2024 to $33m in 2029. If it’s accessible through another application, including OEMs, there are opportunities, but the global perception is that FAST is archived content that nobody wants to see.

“Rotana has the largest Arabic library in the world,” said Ghazal. “We have that window to create FAST channels and, by working together with solutions providers and by converting live broadcast feeds, audiences can now turn on their TV and automatically see the channels they want. What we are doing is not only creating FAST channels out of archived inventory, but also enabling immediate access to live brand channels. If viewers want to watch Rotana Khalejia, they can turn on a TCL TV and have that instantly. And that’s a way to monetise that content.”

Streaming is a difficult business, especially with consolidation around the world and giants taking over. The industry is moving towards collaborations with established broadcasters or consolidated partnerships between studios and technology partners. This signifies a move away from stand-alone OTT platforms. Bundling, closer collaboration and even deeper integration are possibly the future.

“Multiple approaches to partnerships exist,” said Qandil. “For instance, we host all SBA content on Shahid. We partner with many other broadcasters and content creator studios to host their content on Shahid under a revenue-sharing model. It is a successful model and it’s growing year over year. More consolidation means fewer players acting as hosts or aggregators. That’s where I see it going.”

Bundling makes sense as ARPU rises and the cost of subscriptions increases. It becomes more compelling for users to buy packs that provide access to multiple services, but they must deliver on retention and longer CLVs for platforms.

“We have stopped short of hard integrating with our partners,” said Walmsley. “We have a Paramount partnership, as many do, even with smaller or local providers where content is delivered as assets that we can distribute. We will end up with bundled services, and we will work with smaller producers in an aggregated fashion to build an adaptable product while continuing to fight for our share of that value.”

Harnessing AI for operational efficiency, smarter discovery and personalisation is imperative in today’s rapidly moving industry. Whether it’s metadata enrichment, compliance monitoring or editorial decision-making, it promises faster, more efficient delivery and can break down user bases and aid hyper-personalisation. Using a single feature more frequently might prompt a different trigger for another user cohort. Doing that segmentation in real time and at greater speed plays into how companies work with customers.

“We can pull in vast sets of CDN logs and see what the knock-on impact of those actions and reactions are. It enables us to segment a base quicker,” said Walmsley. “But we believe it is better to have tangible, realistic goals to move towards, rather than constantly trying to keep up with developments in models and capabilities.”

Companies wishing to scale are implementing AI efficiencies that help them make informed, data-driven decisions. “We invested in data a long time ago and have reached a point where we process 7TB of data a day, powering everything we do. Our recommendation engines are driven by data that we collect daily, down to precise interest profiles and behavioural signals,” said Qandil.

With Shahid in a unique position as an Arab service available worldwide, the company is using AI for dubbing and subtitling to service a growing global audience. “AI subtitles our content into 32 languages, and we are testing advances in dubbing. We hope to roll out AI-dubbed content in different languages next year.”

As OTT players use AI to scale new audiences and reach additional regions, data continues to play a central role in retention and cost optimisation.

“Data is our backbone, and we make decisions based on that,” said Majzoub. “We have segmented our users across multiple segments and data classes. By introducing an AI layer we will accelerate toward real-time operations, embedding it into content discovery to better predict churn behaviour and actively manage retention. ”

In the world’s fastest-growing digital markets, the future is shaped by meaningful possibilities that enhance scale, reach and monetisation. While working to deliver higher-quality content, operators must also creatively expand monetisation to reclaim value currently flowing to social platforms. As economic models evolve, platforms must prioritise proactive disruption in pursuit of subscriber growth, while expanding their footprint to reach new audiences.