SPT: FAST is heading to become one of the first content distribution windows

During the first day of activities of the NexTV Series México, Vanessa Rosas, VP Streaming Partnerships and Business Operations of TelevisaUnivision; Francisco Rivera, head of Emerging Business & Operations at Sony Pictures Entertainment LatAm, and Guillermo Franco, member of the Multimedios Steering Committee, spoke about the growth of this new way of viewing content al the panel “FAST + CTV: The combination of the future. They also addressed the integration of FAST channels in CTV and its relation with brands. Aline Jabbour, director of Business Development Latin America of Samsung TV Plus, moderated the talk.

“The audiences are the ones adapting to the changes, and as industry players, we seek to have a presence on all platforms because the consumer is learning where to find the content. We must be balanced and understand the market because audiences are constantly moving, and if we do not want to lose them, we have to move with them,” said Rosas.

Franco spoke about the challenges of Multimedios Group in the FAST space. “We are a hybrid model because we came from being open TV to adapt to FAST. It has not been easy to understand. It is not like the linear channel we have consumed all our lives, so we analyze the data from open TV and FAST to adjust to what the audience is watching. We follow the same strategy of producing live, but we also have native FAST channels, where we take canned content, package it, and adjust it along the way.”

Rosas added that the main challenge was in Mexico and the US where most of the productions are located, and regarding the FAST audiences taking away ratings from the TV audiences. “But the measurements showed this was unlikely and contrary, audiences were adding up. Through FAST, we are reaching audiences we did not reach before, and third-party platforms are adding ratings from people who were not on our platform but viewing our content through others.”

Francisco Rivera from Sony Pictures Television spoke of FAST as the first distribution window. “We have already seen the evolution of streaming platforms that started from scratch and reached a significant scale. In Mexico, there are more than 12 million connected TVs, and this is growing exponentially, pointing to becoming one of the first windows. For Sony, it started as our only window three years ago, which is why we have better content. There is an opportunity to combine windows on different platforms in the future, whether on linear TV or FAST, complementing other experiences. But we need more scale and interest from sponsors. In the AVOD ecosystem, FAST is growing the most, especially in Mexico, where it ranks ninth in this market.”

In this regard, Franco, from Multimedios, gave as an example the growth of his channel Milenio Televisión detected after analyzing their audience on open and pay TV and on all FAST and streaming platforms. “We discovered that the audience on linear TV has been decreasing while digital platforms are increasing. But we saw that with current audiences, the crossover will occur in the last quarter of 2025 when those who watch us on pay TV will see us on FAST. The latter is no longer an option. Our business model is free TV to distributors; we live off advertising and are keen on having the greatest possible distribution. We were surprised by the growth in FAST consumption. So our challenge is improving the experience and innovating the signal to make it more user-friendly.”

Finally, Rivera restated the importance of understanding trends and how quickly they change, in addition to thinking about the users, what they see when buying a smart TV, and the first thing they view are the channels. “For people in TV, especially for the younger generations, the difference in the industry for the consumer of all these formats, whether it is open, paid or digital, is disappearing, so it is important to join forces to seize the content and channel opportunities there are.”