As major streamers and distributors start to look back into 3rd party buyer and seller markets, we’ve noticed a couple of interesting sales involving second windows for big name SVOD original shows that we think are worth knowing about.
1. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
Last year, Amazon announced its plan to sell its original content after the launch of its new division, Amazon MGM Studios Distribution. The global streamer particularly emphasised Amazon Prime Original “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” as one of the shows expected to be sold from their original titles.
The first four seasons of the show have so far been sold in Australia and France to Free TV businesses. In Australia, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” became available on SBS on Demand from 18th July 2024 as a boxset. Its most recent sale is with French broadcaster M6 where the show was released on its AVOD service, M6+, in France on 2nd September 2024, also as a boxset. While seasons one to four have already premiered in the second window, the whole series is still available on Amazon Prime including its fifth and final season. As this makes the windows co-exclusive it will be intriguing to see how long these windows will remain on these free advertising supported platforms or if before long exclusivity reverts to Amazon Prime again.
As Amazon continues its sales endeavour, we may soon see more original titles from the global SVOD premiering on a variety of platforms in different markets.
2. Tulsa King
Another SVOD original premiering on M6 is Paramount+’s “Tulsa King”. Season one of the show was released on 8 October 2024 on its Free TV channel with catchup on M6+. This is quite a quick second window as the show was only released a year before on Paramount+ and is quite a deviation from other second windows after SVOD we’ve seen, which usually have a sizeable holdback time of multiple years before the second window. It shows a shift in strategy from Paramount and puts more emphasis into the idea of more sales than the current streamer ideology of title exclusivity. It’s also interesting as the timing of this second window is only a couple of weeks after the first window of the second season aired on Paramount+ meaning this experimentation could lead to an increased interest in the new season to try and attract more subscribers who don’t want to wait to see if it also appears on Free TV.
This release came out at a time when M6 signed a deal with Paramount’s AVOD platform Pluto TV. The agreement will have selected channels from both parties be available on each other’s digital platform (12 Pluto TV channels on M6+ and 6 M6 channels on Pluto TV). There seems to be a growing a relationship between the two parties that may be a sign of more Paramount content appearing on M6-owned services in the future.
With companies looking for various ways to monetise their content, it looks like even digital original titles are now being sold to prospective buyers like M6 and SBS. This may shorten or end the exclusivity and holdback of original content on their respective SVOD services with more originals premiering on third-party platforms.
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