PROSTRATEGY
SURVIVING THE NEW WORLD ORDER The popular CEO panel was back at the ASBU BroadcastPro Summit, with industry stakeholders examining the status quo and discussing their plans for 2022 and strategies to maintain a commercially viable position in a continuously evolving new world order. Vijaya Cherian sums up the discussion
STRATEGY&
IPSOS
Karim Sarkis
ZEE ENTERTAINMENT
Manoj Mathew
Elie Aoun
STARZPLAY
Maaz Sheikh
With OTT platforms dominating the media landscape and gaining more traction during the pandemic, moderator Karim Sarkis, Partner Entertainment and Media – Middle East | Strategy&, kicked off the discussion by asking if the Arab world was closer to being taken over by streamers. Participating were Elie Aoun, CEO Media MEA, Ipsos; Manoj Mathew, Executive VP & Territory Head, Zee Entertainment (MENAPT); Maaz Sheikh, co-founder and CEO of StarzPlay; and Olivier Bramly, CEO of E-Vision. While the panellists acknowledged the increasing
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E-VISION
Olivier Bramly uptake of streaming services and agreed that globally the scales are tipping in favour of OTT, they felt that the Middle East continues to have a faithful linear audience and that the status quo is unlikely to change at least for the next five to six years, with the relationship between linear and OTT more complementary than competitive. “We see streaming platforms as complementing and completing the entertainment experience. In Saudi Arabia, AVOD/SVOD penetration is around 65% – and if you add to that social media uptake, it would be around
