Roku takes over the rights to the catalog of the extinct Quibi and enters the streaming market

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In October 2020, Quibi founder Jeffrey Katzenberg wrote the epitaph for his company, which promised to dethrone Netflix from the streaming market crown but ended up digging its own grave six months later.

At the end of the released statement, Katzenberg announced that in the coming months he would work "hard to find buyers" for Quibi's content - produced and directed by such figures as Steven Soderbergh, Guillermo del Toro, Steven Spielberg and Sam Raimi - who had orphaned with the closure of its platform.

Now, against all odds, the hard work has paid off and the Quibi catalog has found a buyer.

Roku Inc has acquired the rights to the Quibi catalog for less than one hundred million dollars, according to

The Wall Street Journal,

although to date the financial terms of the agreement have not been disclosed by either party.

Roku is an American company founded in 2008 whose flagship product is the Roku Streaming Player, a device that allows you to convert a normal TV into a smart TV through a device with a USB input or HDMI cable that allows the playback of streaming content and multimedia from audio and video.

The product is similar to the one offered by Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV or Google's Chromecast and can be used worldwide.

Its support and official distribution are available throughout North America, Central America, South America and in some European countries such as France and the United Kingdom.

The company, which last Friday officially acquired the global distribution rights to the 75 programs and documentaries that comprise the entire Quibi catalog, will stream the videos for free but with ads through its own

streaming

platform

, Roku Channel. .

With this acquisition, the American company enters the turbulent and complex market for the production and dissemination of original streaming content, since by being the owner of the failed Quibi series, it begins to play on the same terrain as giants like Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO and Disney Plus.

According to Fast Company, with the Quibi catalog, the company breaks its promise not to enter the streaming market with the production and programming of original content.

Now, Roku, whose shares have risen 3% since the acquisition went public, is betting on the Roku Channel - which last quarter reported 61.8 million users - to compete with the giants of new television.

A hybrid model

"Our broader mission as a company is to capture all the television time that happens in a user's home and to do that, we actually have to offer everything that the consumer wants to see," said Scott Rosenberg, senior vice president of Roku. , to CNN Business in this article.

And the thing is that Roku works in a very particular way: it brings together, in one place, the streaming giants and at the same time, offers a range of original episodes - such as the Quibi catalog - through the Roku Channel, available on the same application.

As Rosenberg explains, the company hopes that its users will not have to leave the platform to search for other content options.

If users want to watch Netflix, they can do so on Roku.

And if you want to see something that Netflix does not offer, but that Amazon Prime or Disney Plus does, you can do it there too.

And, if you want content of your own from Roku, there is Roku Channel.

But to offer everything, you have to have everything and that is why Roku has been nurturing, little by little, the content of the Roku Channel.

The company has revealed to CNN Business that its channel offers more than 40,000 free movies and TV shows and 150 live channels.

Roku's

premium

service

(Streaming Stick + 4K) costs approximately € 70 and includes the long-range wireless receiver, remote control with TV controls, and the Roku Channel catalog.

With this acquisition, Quibi takes his last breath and will be able to die definitively knowing that his millionaire production contents will live on Roku Channel.

But within streaming wars, nothing is forever and the ghost that haunted, shattered and buried Quibi will continue to haunt.

Lest you have migrated to Roku.

The battle for the new television

Juan Diego Godoy

Today nobody remembers Blockbuster and everyone talks about Netflix.

This way of watching television already accounts for 25% of the television market, after attracting nearly 900 million users, according to the latest Nielsen Holdings audience report.

The objective continues to be to beat Netflix's strong leadership, as there are many competitors in the new television market, but most of the pie is shared between five: Netflix (with 183 million subscribers) Amazon Prime (150 million), HBO (140 million), Disney Plus (50 million) and Apple TV (33 million).

However, in the battle of streaming, the numbers are not exclusive. Thus, Netflix subscribers are not necessarily exclusive to that platform, so it is not uncommon that, for example, they also consume Prime or HBO. In the race to lead and enter the new television market, the audience is the boss. The case of Quibi, the platform that promised to unseat Netflix and that had to close in six months after a millionaire investment, is the best example to understand that in this battle not everyone who competes wins, but to win you have to compete.