Profile: No rival for RivusTV
Live video streaming was once the domain of the mainstream news media, premier league sports and high stakes political debates. Now, two classical musicians have brought accessible technology to the little guys: to minor sports, professional musicians, community organisations and high school orchestras. RivusTV is inexpensive to set up, simple to use and, most importantly, easy to monetise.
The brainchild of Australian brass musicians Geoff Collinson and Paul Evans, RivusTV 421 is a simple portable black box with video input capacity. It can stream and schedule content anywhere in the world and charge per view in multiple currencies. Commercialised in late 2009, the platform is now used to broadcast secondary league sports, music gigs, corporate communications, arthouse films and even funerals and weddings. Chief executive officer Simon Bailey says the concept is simple. “We’re creating a conduit that puts viewers in contact with content and then shares the revenue around the circle for everyone.”
Where an Australian audience is too small for a niche community of interest to make profit from video content, RivusTV allows an organisation to access an international audience. For example, Australian water polo has been streaming using RivusTV for 12 months. “They now stream all games, have a weekly water polo TV show and has attracted sponsorship because it now has a broad audience. And we’ve replicated that model in a daisy chain around the world for federated clubs.” The same model has been applied to an international opera syndicate and could work for any minor sport.
Bailey says it’s a big model that will work internationally, as RivusTV targets communities of interest. “You create a community of interest where there is a range of viewers. We allow them to share their content and to make money from their content through the support of their members. And then we bill them in all verticals.”
The content syndication model is unique to RivusTV. Usually, whoever streams pay-per-view content will reap the profits. But a hardcore Melbourne fan is unlikely to watch an away game on Townsville’s broadcast if they will be raising money for a rival club. “We looked at that and said why don’t we make it so that everyone can make money?” Using RivusTV 421, the owner of the content, the broadcaster, affiliates and RivusTV make money. “In sports that creates a fundraiser, in music it puts funds back in the hands of musicians who don’t have recording contracts.”
Content syndication is RivusTV’s major USP. And with a set-up cost 80 percent cheaper than its nearest competitor, it’s an accessible and inexpensive way for an individual or community operator to make money from digital content. There are vaults and vaults of currently worthless sporting, arthouse and documentary material archived around the world, Bailey says. “We’re effectively doing what iTunes did in the context of rejuvenating archived music which had not been in print for years. If you expose anything to an international audience it’s a very large audience. It costs (the footage owners) nothing unless someone views it but when someone views it, they’re making money.”
RivusTV spent 2010 creating ‘reference sites’ all over the world, in a bid to reduce the need for a direct sales force as the company expands. This year, Bailey expects profits to increase tenfold as resellers offer the technology to their own client lists. International business is growing, and by 2012 RivusTV will be a platform for cycling in Europe, martial arts in the USA and basketball and soccer in Asia. Bailey is concentrating on building a solid market in Australia to springboard into international syndicates. (The US martial arts opportunity came because Martial Arts Australia was using the technology.) RivusTV is working with big names like ESPN and Yahoo as well as no-names such as independent music promoter ScoutTV.
“Once it starts to move, it will move fast and move internationally,” Bailey predicts. By 2012, he expects content syndication will drive a twentyfold increase in profits. “With syndication, once you mobilise an international market, it kind of grows while you sleep.”
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