Having shown the importance of exclusive content for audience growth and consumers’ willingness
to pay, as well as the high costs associated with its creation, it is clear that exclusive content must
be marketed efficiently in order to establish long-term market leadership.
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3.3
Certain big players in the streaming and TV
market, such as Amazon or Joyn, therefore
follow a hybrid model with free and premium
content. They manage to attract customers
with free content and generate customer
lock-in via a paywall model, which means that
customers are charged a fee to access
additional premium content.
These players not only produce exclusive
content, but also secure rights to broadcast
externally produced content that are exclusive
to one network. While creating a huge
marketing advantage, this option might
be more cost-efficient than producing own
content. For instance, Sky and HBO had an
output deal in place, providing Sky with
complete exclusivity on all HBO content for
the DACH region. Even if the content was
produced by HBO, it could not be seen
anywhere else except for Sky Atlantic.