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Building alliances [DigitalProductionME.com]
[September 17, 2014]

Building alliances [DigitalProductionME.com]


(DigitalProductionME.com Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Yahlive, the Abu Dhabi-based satellite broadcast company, already beams more than 110 free-to-air (FTA) HD and SD television channels to more than 5 million households in the region. But for Sami Boustany, who became CEO last year, this is just the beginning.



The company has certainly managed to gain traction in terms of geographical reach and viewership, and Boustany sees much potential in segmenting and fully exploiting this strength. Yahlive's footprint encompasses much of the Middle East and North Africa, South West Asia and Europe. This coverage is provided by three beams from the Yahsat 1A Satellite: The MENA beam for Middle East, Levant and North Africa; the European beam which covers most of Europe except for Russia; and an East beam that covers Levant, GCC, and South West Asia. "Overall our footprint covers a population size of an estimated 1.5 billion," Boustany says.

The company, which is jointly owned by UAE satellite operator Yahsat and Luxembourg-based satellite operator SES, has experienced solid growth in the past 12 months after restructuring its sales teams and re-tuning its strategy. "As far as visible growth is concerned, we grew north of 140% in terms of the number of channels and proportionally in terms of revenue," Boustany says. "So it has been quite a fast and steep uphill march and we expect to keep that pace and direction for the next year at least." [[banner]] Much of this growth stemmed from the various initiatives put in place by Boustany and his team during the past 15 months. This included a restructuring of the sales, marketing and business development teams. "We swiftly shifted gears in terms of our market focus and priorities. Organically we have also grown. We have increased and reorganised the size and structure of our teams to be able to address the different markets that we have chosen to develop and we have quickly adopted a new MO that works with our new goals," Boustany says.


In particular Boustany and his team have drilled down into the main regions to identify the main opportunities and device strategies to exploit them. In particular, the company has been paying extra attention to the East beam. "This is where most of the consolidation of these markets under our coverage is happening so what we have done is segmented the market based on a better understanding of its broadcasters and its viewers. The segmentation is mainly based on culture and language and we've aligned all of these findings with our strategy, even to the point where we've created the teams around these different markets," he says.

Furthermore, each sales and marketing team has its own PNL and set of subject matter experts based on these regions, allowing regional teams to handle tasks including sales, technical, marketing, and finance. "That has been very useful. The idea was rather than look at this as a global or regional business we had to dissect each territory thoroughly. We quickly saw that each market had its own flavour and required its own means," he adds.

Yahlive has also grown its infrastructure on the ground during the past six months, and much of this was done via its outsourced partners. "In terms of infrastructure, we have expanded our ground components significantly this year. Due to the fast growth in number of channels that we saw, we had to quickly upgrade our uplink facilities and even commission some new ones," Boustany says.

Yahlive handles uplink through a combination of its own infrastructure, and increasingly that of its partners. It owns infrastructure across the GCC and also uses the uplink capacity of key partners such as UAE telcos Du and Etisalat, and Abu Dhabi's media production hub, twofour54. In Europe Yahlive has outsourced uplinking to two companies called Arqiva and Vicus Luxlink. It also works closely with Jordan Media City (JMC) where its customer care center, the Yahlive Monitoring Center (YMC) is hosted.

Boustany stressed that Yahlive works very closely with its partners for the expansion of ground infrastructure. "When our partners on the ground decide to invest in us we feel compelled to treat that investment as if it's our own, and we're heavily involved in the planning and development phases of outsourced ground infrastructure." The CEO adds that Yahlive is currently building two more uplink stations with its partners in Kabul and Erbil that are due to be up and running in 2015. And in 2015, the company expects to build three more uplink stations although Boustany was unable to divulge the locations at the time of the interview with Digital Broadcast. "If you look at the last 12 months we have almost doubled the size of our ground infrastructure," he says.

An important part of Yahlive's strategy over the past year has been to dissect its main geographical regions more carefully, and this applies particularly to the Middle East. "In Europe it is pretty much different shades of the same colour across the board when it comes to broadcaster and viewer priorities. As for the Middle East and the East, diversity is prominent when it comes to business and social cultures. Therefore we have created these compartments within the company to cater to that diversity. We are very proud about one fact, which is that despite all these differences on the ground, we are able to maintain the same level of service and commitment to our customers without any technical or business bias," Boustany says.

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[[page-break]] "Sometimes it is very difficult to be consistent and uniform because some customers in some regions are very sensitive to one thing while the others are not. Whether it is price, image quality etcetera. However, we have been successful so far in presenting a value proposition that resonates with all broadcasters and that is also unbiased and fair. We think that this has helped us in growing as fast as we did because it establishes a strong rapport with our customers, mainly a rapport based on trust and a commitment; a commitment to deliver the best in-class service the satellite broadcasting industry has to offer." Yahlive does not just work directly with broadcasters but also works with broadcast aggregators. This gives the company an indirect relationship with multiple broadcasters through one central point of contact, which works well in terms of netting more business. "For all of these regions we have found strong partners on the ground - mainly aggregators of channels," Boustany says.

These aggregators, which have contributed to Yahlive's growth in the past year, including North Telecom, Moby Group, SkyMena and Babylon. "We are deeply entrenched with our partners. Our plans intersect and our business cases converge, so we always treat their business case as if it's our own, always making sure that they are both successful," he says. "We base it on a long-term partnership." [[banner]] Yahlive intends to continue to build its relationship with these aggregators and has agreed a long term vision with them. This vision involves being selective in the channels that are beamed by Yahlive. "We have no wish to be a 300-400 channel platform in the near future. The aim is to be selective and make sure they [distributors] bring the top broadcasters from the markets we are targeting and provide something substantial to the customer, because ultimately the customer likes smart choices and substantial variety. We are being very careful how we select. When these aggregators come with their channels, we sit down with them and discuss whether these channels align with our targets or they don't," the CEO says.

Indeed, Yahlive conducts a significant amount of research on its markets and also gathers various types of data – such as viewing patterns and taste – both from its broadcast customers and viewers.

This approach puts Yahlive in an important position: while its individual customers and partners may have a good understanding of their own geographical area, Yahlive is able to put all of the information together like a jigsaw, and gain an understanding of a bigger picture. What Yahlive learns from this can benefit it in terms of knowing which channels to select for a particular market, and of course, the broadcast customers can also benefit.

"We have a strong connection with our direct customers, our broadcasters, a strong connection with our aggregators and certainly with the viewers. There is always a feedback loop from the viewers to us," Boustany says, adding that the initiative to network more with the viewers is well on its way yet still at a relatively early stage of development.

"When we work close with our partners there is always this discussion of whether this channel that we are bringing on board works in a particular market or not" Boustany says. "We can't afford to be complacent when it comes to only selling raw satellite capacity, we just cannot. For us it has always been about the quality of the content and how it relates to our audience and not about the number of channels per se." Yahlive views its position in the wider broadcast ecosystem as so important that it even discusses what type of content is being aired by some of its customers. It is an approach that Boustany believes will bring significant rewards by creating a kind of virtuous cycle in which all parties stand to win. "Eventually it is important that we understand what the audience wants. This requires that we work with our broadcasters to see how we can incentivise them to develop content that caters to the viewers," Boustany adds.

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[[page-break]] Yahlive overview YahLive is a satellite company broadcasting television channels across MENA, South West Asia and Europe. It offers premium HD and SD free-to-air TV channels to over 50 million households in the region. Launched in 2011 and positioned at 52.5 degrees East, YahLive offers quality TV, and contribution services over Yahsat's Y1A satellite. Headquartered in Abu Dhabi, YahLive is a joint venture between Al Yah Satellite Communications Company (Yahsat), and SES, a Luxembourg-based satellite operator.

HD – ready or not? At present 30% of Yahlive's channels are in HD. Despite all the hype about HD and 4K, the evidence on the ground suggests that SD, or standard definition, still reigns supreme in the areas covered by Yahlive.

"HD is not a priority for us and the reason is because a lot of the content produced locally – 90% or more – is not in High Definition. HD will become a priority when it becomes the priority of our customers," Boustany says.

[[banner]] "We believe that HD has its benefits of course, but for the time being we believe that the focus of the viewers in the region is on the quality of the entertainment and information combined with a crisp clean image and sound. Something our infrastructure can provide to all broadcasters, HD or not. We decided to shift our focus away from hardware –centric differentiators to softer more content-centric ones, although all of our ground and space infrastructure can deliver the best HD and even 4K image while using the smallest receive dish size the satellite industry has seen in the region. In other words we provide the most efficient bandwidth out there, regardless of transmission schemes utilised. We should not be distracted from what is essential today to our broadcasters and viewers, and that's to provide relevant and quality infotainment using the best technology at our disposal." (c) 2014 ITP Business Publishing Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Provided by SyndiGate Media Inc. (Syndigate.info).

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