Month-old streamer Begin signs package deal with Sony

Fledgling UAE-based SVOD platform Begin has inked a one-year deal with Sony Pictures Entertainment to acquire exclusive and non-exclusive rights to content from the studio’s library. Kids series headed to the streamer include Jackie Chan Adventures (pictured, 95 x 22 minutes) and Men in Black: The Series (53 x 22 minutes), along with Sony films such as The Smurfs, Venom and The Amazing Spider-Man 2. 

“Kids content is an integral part of our content mix [and] a huge part of our value proposition as we gear up to launch our services in Southwest Asia and the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council),” says Jonathan Mark, Begin’s co-founder and chief commercial officer.

Available on smart TVs, PCs, Android and IOS devices, Begin soft-launched in April and is set for an official rollout on May 31. It offers a kids profile for viewers under the age of seven, and its content is available in English and Urdu.  

The platform secured seed funding last year from Karachi-based accelerator Z2C Limited, and has since signed similar exclusive and non-exclusive content deal with  NBC Universal. 

Begin plans to eventually expand its reach beyond Pakistan and into other Southwestern Asian and Arabian countries including Saudi Arabia and the UAE, markets where consumers spend a lot of time and money on mobile. 

To promote Pakistan’s growing app and digital content market to the rest of the world, the streamer conducted extensive research and released a State of Apps – Pakistan 2023 report last month with market intelligence firm Data Darbar looking at app downloads and digital spending. Among its key insights, Pakistanis cumulatively spent more than 99 billion hours on mobile devices last year—ranking 10th in the world. The country’s mobile market is still fairly young, but spending is on the rise, hitting US$87 million in 2023 (up from US$83 million the previous year). 

Pakistan’s annual SVOD revenue is expected to increase from US$353 million in 2024 to US$514 million by 2027, according to Statista.