Hulu says 2015 will be a ‘break out year’ in the US as streaming platform challenges television
Mike Hopkins speaking at today’s Newfronts
Ad supported streaming service Hulu has vowed to make 2015 its ‘break out year’ after the company increased its subscriber base by 50 per cent in the last 12 months.
Speaking at the Newfronts in New York overnight CEO Mike Hopkins told a room full of media buyers how total streaming hours were up 83 per cent to 700 million on the previous year, as the company goes head to head with traditional TV networks but and streaming rivals like Netflix which has some 40m US users.
“Things are already paying off, we are growing faster than ever before,” said Hopkins. “In just one year our subscriber base has grown 50 per cent to nine million subscribers… 2015 is the year that Hulu will break out.”
Hulu themselves are looking at entering the Australian market at some stage. Their support team told me via email they need to obtain streaming rights for Australia-which takes time & establish new partnerships for technology and advertising.
Here’s what they told me:
At the moment, we don’t have any international streaming rights for our content, so we’re not able to stream outside of the US, regardless of another countries laws regarding VPNs.
We’d love to be accessible everywhere, but in order to make that happen we would need to obtain streaming rights for each show and movie in each specific region. We may also need to establish relationships with local advertisers to subsidize our streaming costs, like we do in the US. We might even need new technology partnerships to ensure that content streaming is up to our standards.
So while I don’t have any details to share regarding our plans for the future, we are well aware of the demand
Thinking about scrapping dodgy Foxtel, buying an Apple TV, and subscribing to Stan, Netflix & Hulu (when it arrives). Still cheaper than Foxtel.
vpn with us ip and adblock plus gets you ad-free hulu now, but unless you’re into old US crap, it’s not really worth it.
Hulu has most US TV shows available either one day or one week (depending on the network it came from) after it airs in the US, plus it has exclusive Hulu content.
It’s hardly “old us crap” so that commenter has obviously never used Hulu.