Discovery Forges Strategic Partnership With Saudi OTT Service Jawwy TV
Discovery has forged a multi-year strategic partnership with Saudi Telecom’s Intigral media unit for its OTT service Jawwy TV, involving some 4,000 hours of premium on-demand content.
Under the deal, seven of Discovery’s linear channels including Discovery Channel, Fatafeat, TLC, Discovery Family, Animal Planet, Discovery Science and Investigation Discovery will air on the Jawwy TV platform and its app in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain.
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Titles include Discovery Plus originals such as “The Impossible Row,” “Amy Schumer Learns to Cook (Uncensored),” and “JonBenet Ramsey: What Really Happened?” as well as other global Discovery franchises including “Shark Week,” “MythBusters,” “Gold Rush,” “Expedition Unknown,” “House Hunters International,” “90 Day Fiancé,” “NASA’s Unexplained Files” and “Say Yes to the Dress.”
“We are delighted to enter this new partnership with the leading telco operator in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and combine our strengths to provide customers access to our much-loved brands and content on Discovery Plus,” said Kasia Kieli, President & MD of Discovery EMEA in a statement. The Saudi deal “reaffirms our digital strategy as we continue to grow our global footprint,” she added.
“As the entertainment arm of STC (Saudi Telecom Company) the most valuable brand amongst telecommunications companies in the MENA region, we are thrilled to have partnered with Discovery to offer its extensive content portfolio to our subscribers,” said Markus Golder, CEO of Intigral, who added: “Jawwy TV is the leading content aggregation platform in the MENA region, and we are committed to delivering the widest portfolio of content to our subscribers.”
The Jawwy TV app comprises both linear TV and SVOD offerings and offers a wide range of Western and Arabic titles across multiple genres.
The MENA region’s OTT market has been seeing double digit growth lately with Netflix, Starz Play Arabia, Shahid Plus, OSN, Jawwy TV and others all vying for new customers as pay-TV subscribers drop. Disney Plus has not launched yet in the region.
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