Starz Moves Into International Markets With Middle East Service

By Keach Hagey 

Starz, the premium cable network known for shows like "Spartacus" and "Outlander," said it will make its first foray into an international market on Thursday with the launch of a subscription streaming video service in the Middle East.

Dubbed Starz Play Arabia, the new service will cost $13.99 a month and be available in 17 countries throughout the region from Morocco to Iraq, with a special marketing focus on oil-rich Gulf countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Starz has a minority stake in the Starz Play international venture, along with an unnamed American investor and the Swedish media group Parsifal Entertainment. Parsifal also has teamed up with HBO to launch a stand-alone streaming service in the Nordic region.

The move means Starz has beaten online streaming rivals like Netflix Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. to the region, which traditionally has been dominated by hundreds of free-to-air satellite channels. It also gives Starz, a newcomer to international expansion, a faster way of catching up to rivals like HBO, which has channels in some 60 countries and licenses its content to linear channels in the Middle East.

Launching TV channels overseas "is a very expensive and lengthy process, " Starz Cheif Executive Chris Albrecht, the former CEO of HBO, said in an interview. "[Subscription video on demand] is a product that appeals to what we think is the generation of consumer that exists and that's growing there, and the technology allows us to do it much more quickly."

U.S. media companies are targeting international markets for subscriber growth as the domestic pay television market matures, even though profit margins are generally slimmer overseas.

In the U.S., the Starz streaming service is available only to people who subscribe to the Starz pay-TV channel. Mr. Albrecht said the company has no plans to follow HBO in launching a stand-alone streaming service in the U.S., but is considering expanding in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

In addition to Starz's own programming, the Starz Play service in the Middle East will include library content from several Hollywood studios and locally produced content.

As part of the launch, Starz said Maaz Sheikh, the former chief sales and operations officer of pay-TV company Orbit Showtime Network, would become the president and chief operating officer of Starz Play Arabia.

"We are at the very beginning stages of this, but we have resources and we are not afraid to partner," Mr. Albrecht said. "There are entrepreneurs and other companies in other regions that are interested in having a stake in this business."

Write to Keach Hagey at [e-mail]

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