Altice Group, the parent company of Israeli cable TV operator Hot Telecommunication Systems Ltd. (TASE: HOT) has signed a cooperation agreement with Netflix. This agreement comes hard on the heels of a deal signed last week between Partner Communications Ltd. (Nasdaq: PTNR; TASE: PTNR) and Netflix for the new Partner TV service.
As part of the agreement between Partner and Netflix, TV viewers will be able to receive Netflix content as part of a package and in the coming months Partner will likely have exclusivity on this content. The agreement between Altice and Netflix will probably only come into effect from the end of 2017 and will encompass all the countries in which Altice operates, including Israel.
Partner will launch its TV service in the coming few weeks and the agreement with Netflix is an anchor deal for it.
Netflix policy is not to allow exclusive agreements with operators in any particular country so while TV companies (like Partner and Hot) will offer their content, it will also be possible to order unlimited services directly via the Internet.
Following Hot's announcement of its Netflix agreement, there has been a war of words between Israeli market rivals Partner and Hot. Sources close to Partner insist that the agreement between Hot and Netflix is part of an international agreement and therefore inherently inferior to the agreement which it has with the US content provider. Those same sources argue that Partner will be Netflix's main partner in Israel, which will give its subscribers exclusive benefits. The sources also claim that only a small percentage of Hot's TV set-top boxes will be able to support Netflix content while all Partner's set-top boxes will have built-in Netflix support.
On the other hand, Hot claims that Altice's agreement will enable all its customers to fully benefit from Netflix's content.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on June 1, 2017
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