At the beginning of 2020, when FAST (free ad-supported streaming TV) channels were already in a strong position in the USA, Rakuten TV was one of the first to scale up and bring them to 43 European countries from day one. Today, with 600 channels (120 of which are owned and operated, or O&O), reaching 150 million households in Europe, the Barcelona-based streaming platform is ready to export its own offering to the USA, the Middle East and Japan.

This announcement was made at MIPCOM, the global entertainment market taking place in Cannes from 12-15 October, by Rakuten TV CEO Cédric Dufour during the panel “FAST Beyond Borders: Rakuten TV on What It Takes to Scale into New Global Markets”.

This expansion into new international territories is being led by the Rakuten TV Enterprise division, which was also launched at MIPCOM Cannes in 2024. “It is a B2B platform designed to provide content owners, distributors and other industry partners with the technical integration and infrastructure required to manage and monetise FAST channels and content-focused video applications,” Dufour says.

Rakuten TV works with many telco operators, such as Orange and Vodafone in Spain, and 1&1 in Germany, to operate its VoD store: “We can either provide just the content or the technology. We can build a channel from scratch for a client that provides us with its own content, which we need to schedule, refresh and connect to the platform.”

Dufour continues: “We launched the FAST channels to respond to the audience need to avoid content overload. There is editorial complexity, besides technical complexity. The abundance of content is one of the most urgent challenges our industry faces: you can choose either to lose it or to find ways to help people find the relevant content through recommendations or personalisation.”

This is where AI could really make a difference, he thinks: “AI won’t change content, but it will change the way people can discover and access it.” And he reveals that Rakuten TV is working on enabling audiences to share their mood and express what they want to watch.

Alongside the growth of Enterprise, Rakuten TV has continued to produce and exclusively distribute high-quality O&O FAST channels, sourcing content from Hollywood studios as well as leading local broadcasters and rightsholders. The key is always fine-tuning the offer for every country. “The Bollywood channel ZEE, for example, is the number-one entertainment channel in Germany but doesn’t perform so well in other European countries. In the UK, news channels perform very well, while in France, single-IP scripted crime is super-trendy. One example is Alerte Cobra, whose episodes air 24/7. Because each country has its own taste, we try to balance localised and globalised content with the help of data and that of members of our team in every region.”

What’s more, its new expansion outside of Europe is different for every territory. In the United States, which constitutes the most developed and competitive FAST market in the world, Rakuten TV is launching Rakuten TV Comedy and Rakuten TV Action, bringing together Hollywood productions and European titles. The channels are now available on the TCLtv+ app, with further platform launches to follow.

In the Middle East's FAST ecosystem, the real opportunity lies in Western cinema channels. Rakuten TV is preparing the launch of Rakuten TV Top Movies and Rakuten TV Action, which will be available through TCLtv+ and TCL Channel in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, as well as on LG Channels in the United Arab Emirates, featuring English-language content with subtitles adapted to the local market. In addition to offering some of the best Hollywood blockbusters, Rakuten TV is exploring the launch of multiple genre channels or single-IP series relevant to the Middle Eastern market.

As mentioned above, the focus is sometimes on the infrastructure, rather than the content. This is the case in Japan, home to the global technology company Rakuten Group, which owns Rakuten TV, and which has chosen it to be the technical integrator to deliver FAST channels to its R Channels FAST platform in Japan.

Finally, in China, “We recently launched a channel for SMG [Shanghai Media Group], which has a huge amount of content. We connect this content to the platform and help SMG distribute it on other platforms, monetise the inventory and share the revenue.”