Super giant massive high street mega shop Tesco’s has acquired 80% a majority stakeholding in movie streaming service Blinkbox which means that Tesco’s are looking into the Video streaming business in the hope of becoming the UK’s own version of Netflix.
Blinkbox offers an online movie streaming service similar to the the UK leading streaming service Lovefilm as a pay per view service that offers over 9,000 pieces of video content (movies and TV shows) to stream live on devices including the PC, Macs, the PS3 console, tablets and internet-enabled TVs.
Blinkbox was originally setup 5 years ago by by former Channel 4 and Vodafone executives in 2006 and launched two years later and offers a range of films and TV shows as free and paid-for downloads, The content is supplied via numerous licensing deals with broadcasters and producers such as BBC Worldwide, Channel 4, ALL3Media and FremantleMedia. The service also has a number of deals with major US studios and networks including Warner Bros too supply top US shows such as Gossip Girl and ER.
Tesco’s UK CEO Richard Brasher stated about the acquisition: “Whether customers want to own the DVD, download a digital movie, stream a rental or all three, Tesco is committed to giving customers choice. We want to allow them to decide how they access entertainment content and on which devices, whether it’s on PC, TV or tablet. The acquisition of Blinkbox, together with a range of other services currently in development, means we can link physical purchase of a product to the building of digital collections in a new and seamless way. Working with the Blinkbox team and our content partners, we will bring these compelling propositions to life for our customers.”
So we think its watch out Amazon as your LoveFilm service now has some big competition on its way… and we all know when Tesco set their mind to something its very hard to beat them.