For years, rights holders and content owners have sold their live and on demand event rights to the highest bidding broadcaster.

For popular, global events, the likes of Sky, DAZN, TNT will secure exclusive rights internationally. But, as the industry has become more competitive, broadcasters have tightened the pursestrings. Rights holders are increasingly offered partial deals or low offers leading to rights for certain geographies often left unsold, forcing them down the avenue of free-to-air platforms like YouTube, with crucial revenue left on the table. 

‍

Start a PPV stream

Rights holders have been desperate for a way to monetise their YouTube streams or unsold rights. And until recently it has been complex.

You see, most OTT platforms operate exclusively on a subscription basis. And with global broadcast deals changing on an event-by-event basis, fans in countries where rights are unsold are not willing to sign up to (yet another) subscription to access the event.

But it is now possible to add a Pay-Per-View option to your live stream.

With Recast, content owners and rights holders can now place their live streams (and VOD) on their own website. You simply:

• Sign up to Recast for free.
• Schedule or upload your content using Recast Stream
• Use Recast’s advanced geo-blocking tool to only permit access in countries where rights are unsold
• Generate an Embed Widget and place the content somewhere on your own website.
• Whitelist affiliates to share your content, increasing your reach by promoting it to new audiences in exchange for a pre-agreed revenue share.

Embed Widgets are created in minutes and require no design or development knowledge to get your content on your site.

And most importantly, because fans access content on a PPV basis via microtransactions, they only ever pay for the event(s) they want to watch and nothing more, ensuring fair and affordable access.

‍

Using pay-per-view with YouTube 

If you have previously hosted live streams on YouTube you’ll know it’s hard to earn significant revenue, and that your users will be regularly exposed to the platform's ads.  Using Recast to host your live streams, you’ll earn up to 10 times more revenue for your content than on YouTube. However, your YouTube channel is a great tool for supporting and growing your PPV audience.

For initial PPV streams, placing preliminary rounds / matches / analysis on YouTube will let you use YouTube’s powerful algorithms and notification services to alert your fans to your PPV event. You can then signpost your fans over to your website to watch the main part of your stream via PPV using a Recast Embed Widget. Remember to link your website in the description to give your fans a simple way to find it. 

Many of your YouTube subscribers would be happy to pay for live events as a way of supporting their favourite sport / team. 

‍

Start a PPV stream for free today 

In summary, it’s now possible for rights holders to monetise their unsold rights in dark markets with a PPV option without having to pay for expensive OTT platforms or subjecting your fans to more subscriptions. Recast is free to use, you only pay a commission when you earn revenue. And you can get your live and on-demand content set up in less than an hour from sign up.

‍