As soon as I see Marc-Antoine d’Halluin striding up the corridor towards me I know that our conversation is going to be brief. “Let’s move rooms, someone has a meeting in here”, says the frantically paced and newly installed CEO and president of Showtime Arabia, the largest pay-TV network in the Arab World.
“This one’s better anyway,” he adds, ushering me assuredly into a boardroom ironically containing a large-screen television and a Showbox, Showtime’s latest bit of wizardry that allows viewers to store programmes overnight and watch them at their leisure.
“Isn’t it a bit like Skyplus?” I suggest. “Sort of, it uses similar technology,” he replies hurriedly.
“So I only have around 20 minutes,” he adds, changing the subject. “Things have been very, very, very busy. This market is the busiest I’ve ever worked in,” says the six-foot plus Frenchman, clearly huffing and puffing from having just scanned the day’s workload scribbled down in his leather-bound diary.
“I’ve only been here just over eight weeks but it’s already proving to be the most compact and unique market I’ve ever worked in. There’s not a market where you would find 300 free-to-air channels. It’s a bit of a crazy market but one that is undergoing an enormous amount of development and changes.”
The main change d’Halluin has implemented since his arrival, however, could prove to be the biggest deal not only of his career, but also of the company’s lifetime and one he calls a “substantial business-defining move” — the exclusive rights to air the lucrative English football Premier League in English and Arabic for the next three years across the whole of the Middle East and North Africa. In TV terms, that’s as big as it gets.
The timing is perfect with the Premier League at its most popular in corporate and public viewing figures, the world’s best players rushing to sign for England’s top clubs, and international investors, including Dubai International Capital clamouring to takeover the likes of Liverpool FC. Not only that, a company’s global marketability and exposure to world markets if it has a serious stake in English football, is massive and d’Halluin is more than aware of the power of the Premier League.
“If you look at Emirates Airline and what it has done with the Emirates stadium and its football sponsorship, and you look at the interest that other clubs attract from other organisations in the region, there is a connection there.
“It attracts the best players and attracts the attention of the media and of business people who want to connect with the quality of the brand that the Premier League is — and that is where we will be.
Although he downplays it, d’Halluin was integral in winning the alleged US$120m deal from rivals ART, when he was carefully hired as a consultant for several months before joining full time. His long-term relationship with the powers that be at the English Premier League has clearly paid off. He secured the rights for a “reasonable price”, and says it is something that can “feed” the entire company’s business model by attracting new subscribers, retaining existing subscribers, and opening up Showtime’s packaging and pricing to a broader target segment. More specifically, one that can afford to pay for premium sports content.
The main deal to air 380 matches, however, means more to Showtime than simply increasing subscriber numbers — a lot more. With top tier advertisers likely to ditch ART and follow Showtime’s sporting success, particularly those looking to target young, male viewers, the money will soon come rolling in.
High-profile advertisers on ART’s sport channels include Chevrolet, Pepsi and Masterfoods and come August this year when the big kickoff for the new 2007-08 season takes place on Showtime, d’Halluin will be able to give himself a big pat on the back. If he has time, that is.
After the previous CEO, Peter Einstein’s 10-year reign, the Premier League victory marks a new era for the network, and one which d’Halluin wants to make his own.
“The new management at Showtime, myself and the new COO and vice president Danny Bottoms, are now leading the company in a dynamic way. We have adjusted the business model to re-balance the content offering with premium movies and series but now also premium sports and we’ve bought what we believe is the most valuable sports franchise in the Premier League. We are fully prepared for the next exciting stage of Showtime.”
In perhaps a hidden message to the previous top brass, d’Halluin says he has spotted the hidden values and opportunities that the pay-TV network has so far failed to exploit to its full potential.
“When there’s a change in management and when the management team has been there quite a while there are lots of hidden opportunities within the business and we are focusing on revealing them quickly because it’s a strong business, a strong company and a great brand but it has lots of areas where it can build on what it already has,” he says with confidence.
“It’s not about being short of the things that we need, we have everything we need, its just about doing a better job and packaging it on and off-air.”
With the Showbox and Premier League coming on-stream within a couple of months of each other (June and August, respectively) d’Halluin explains that the Showtime staff are working “crazy hours” to prepare for the two major launches. The Showbox or Personal Video Recorder (PVR) device, however, has already “soft launched” and the public can purchase a machine in many of the region’s malls for a refundable fee of around US$270 along with the catch of a platinum Showtime package. d’Halluin is clearly proud of what is a first for the region with push video on demand, giving viewers an extra bank of movies and programmes they can access from their Showbox at any time, as one of the main features.
“It has the ability to record quickly and immediately which is unique in the region but obviously it is only halfway through its launch process. We want to load the box with some other dimensions and then have a product with integrity, that is between what is aired on our channels and what is available in the box, in some cases at no extra cost to the subscriber, that will load during overnight so subscribers doesn’t have to think of recording but will have the choice of the best that we broadcast at the end of their remote control.”
The box is one of the new CEO’s “hidden opportunities” and you can see the expectation for a full, and hopefully, successful launch, etched all over his face.
“The big difference is that viewers will be able to watch their favourite programmes whenever they want.
It automatically loads through the night and that’s a massive hidden beauty," he adds.
So why the delay and soft launch, a phrase that often conjures up thoughts of setbacks and caution?
“We have everything in our power to make this happen," he says, “but it’s just about making it happen in a smooth customer and user-friendly way. I won’t say a date when it’s launched but it will come around the middle of the year around June time.”
A refusal to talk about dates and figures is a common theme when chatting to d’Halluin. No subscriber numbers, costs or investment numbers are allowed to slip out of his lips, but it’s nothing personal he says, merely the cutthroat nature of the business he’s in and the threat that the competition poses to Showtime staying one step ahead of the game. The cost of Showtime’s investment, research and development, design, marketing and promotion of its Showbox, for example, is firmly under boardroom lock and key.
“It’s not so much about investing and making an investment, than making everything that we have in this building work together so that the action of loading the box takes place,” says the Frenchman, diverting my attention away from figures to delivering the right message for future customers.
“We’ve done the investment, we have a transmission facility to execute on this in this building (in Media City in Dubai) and we have the new next-generation box that we’re pushing in the market.
“We are transmitting and uploading all our channels from this building and so we are a fully integrated provider. We don’t depend on any outside parties — another hidden value because we can then move fast.”
d’Halluin then swiftly refuses to answer any more questions and we’re done, perhaps suddenly imagining that I could be a spy sent by a rival network to download as much information as possible to feed back to bosses at Orbit or ART.
He does, however promise to reveal “other hidden values in time” including an increase in Arabic content; who the new football presenter will be for Showtime’s Premier League coverage and what special gizmos such as playercam; and even some idea of how many subscribers the business has, the last option getting only a rushed “maybe”, but what else would you expect in the electrically charged world of television?
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