Tubi TV, the top ad-supported, on-demand video service, will launch September 1 in Australia in the first leg of a planned global expansion.
The initial offering will encompass 7,000 movie and TV titles, but will eventually grow to the catalog of 15,000 included in Tubi’s service in the U.S. and Canada.
Ad-supported streaming, once a marginal sector, has gained significant momentum of late. This year alone, Viacom acquired Pluto TV for $340 million, Sony set joint venture with Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment to reboot Crackle, and NBCUniversal unveiled plans for its own AVOD service due out next April.
Marquee titles slated to be streamable in Australia at launch include 3:10 to Yuma, The Blair Witch Project, Kickboxer and Stranger Than Fiction. Over the next six months, Dirty Dancing, The Grudge, Requiem for a Dream, Reservoir Dogs, Saw, Traffic and Young Guns will join the fold.
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“We’re excited to offer Tubi in Australia, as the first of many launch initiatives to advance our global footprint,” Tubi CEO Farhad Massoudi said. “We look forward to further activating new audiences who will discover the growing value of free video on demand.”
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Customers in Australia will be able to access Tubi via Telstra TV, Tubi.TV, or through Samsung TVs, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Google Chromecast and Apple iOS, as well as Android tablets and smartphones. The service will also be available via game consoles like PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
Tubi has rolled out a marketing campaign in the U.S. in an effort to counter a surge of subscription rivals to Netflix. Many viewers find Tubi via the 25 smart TVs and connected devices it lists as distribution partners and discover they don’t need a subscription or pay-TV bundle to use the app. It has claimed record growth through the first half of 2019, reaching 20 million monthly active users. In May alone, customers watched more than 94 million hours of programming.