Sony struck synergy gold last month with the introduction of “Live TV on PS5,” an offering of more than 100 free ad-supported video channels available
Backed by Sony Pictures Television, the venture is a chance to get the IP available to Sony TV (and the ads that can be tied to it) in front of a massive audience that is usually spending their time on gaming consoles, well, gaming.
“The intent is that you have 40-50 million people on PlayStation 5 who are incredibly engaged with that platform, who are spending hours and hours and hours on their favorite games, but who also love to watch entertainment,” chairman Keith Le Goy said Thursday during a panel conversation with Variety co-editor-in-chief Cynthia Littleton at the Variety Entertainment & Technology Summit presented by EY. “And therefore, if you can do two things, one is to curate the entertainment offering in a way that is pertinent to them, but also make it a very seamless transition from their gaming engagement to their entertainment engagement, then you have a real chance to engage an audience which traditionally has been a hard-to-reach audience for linear channels, a very hard-to-reach audience and a very attractive audience for advertisers.”
Goy added: “So if we can give that audience something that they’re going to like in an environment that they are comfortable with, give our channel partners an audience that they are going to be going after and give their advertisers an audience that’s valuable for them. That is one plus one equaling a lot more than two.”
The PlayStation 5 FAST channel offering launched last month in the U.S. and Goy says the intention is to roll it out across “other countries in the coming months.” Goy sees the option as one unique to Sony, which distinguishes itself from many other players in Hollywood by having film, TV, music and gaming divisions all under one roof.
“In many ways, people talk about the incursion of the tech companies into Hollywood, we were the first and I think we’ve learned a lot along the way,” You mentioned the relationship with PlayStation. “That’s the other thing that Sony has, that frankly a lot of other companies would love to have, is a gaming business and the level of engagement with gamers and gaming fans. That is what PlayStation has.”
Goy says another area where Sony has “an unfair advantage, a particular right to win” is the anime industry through Crunchyroll and Aniplex.
“Obviously, Crunchyroll has been an incredibly successful venture for us and has really allowed us to create this kind of anime ecosystem with Aniplex and Crunchyroll where we are able to super serve fans in a way that very few other companies, in fact, really no other company could do,” Goy says.
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