Vietnamese Pay TV brand K+ thinks mobile streaming will drive people to pay for football content
Sports content is the latest vertical to face serious disruption, as rights costs increase and digital fragments viewers, but a Vietnamese brand is fighting fire with fire - mobile - in a new campaign.
K+ plans to lure Vietnamese football fans with mobile streaming
Pay TV business K+ has launched a humorous new campaign, alongside JWT, to try and convince the football-loving Vietnamese to switch from watching games for free in a bar, to paying to stream at any time on mobile.
The campaign, which uses traditional TV, digital, search and social media, was created to launch the new myK+NOW package, which offers subscribers TV quality streaming on their mobile devices without the hassle of installing a set top box.
The ads follow a Manchester United fan in a series of funny situations as he tries to catch the game, including sneaking out the house without alerting his wife in one ad and coming across a rowdy bunch of Manchester City fans at the bar in another.
Saby Mishra, CEO of J. Walter Thompson Vietnam, said: “We are truly inspired by the K+ vision of bringing premium viewing experiences via TV content Vietnamese consumers love, on the devices they love. This is about future-proofing pay-tv by expanding beyond the conventional set-top box. Our work is designed to drive this intrinsic behavior shift.”
Sports content monetisation is a universal issue but the difference between how it plays out in developed versus developing countries makes for an interesting comparison.
In the UK, early figures around TV viewers of Sky Sports content shows a worrying trend for broadcasters that people are switching habits going elsewhere. It’s led to high profile sports stars stepping into the discussion, including Stan Collymore who spoke to The Drum and warned, “Those illegal streams are always going to be there because the people hosting them are one step ahead of the broadcaster.”
In Vietnam, football fans have always watched for free but it’s been late at night in crowded bars. As shown in this campaign, K+ believes the way to lure people into paying for the content is via mobile. With people migrating to new channels in developed markets like the UK, a lesson may be learnt from how the countries that have ‘leapfrogged’ technology to mobile are attracting and retaining paid content customers.