Inspired by the discussions at StreamTV Show 2024, this article examines the significant impact of the rising Hispanic demographic on the TV streaming sector in the US. We will explore successful strategies employed by major streaming platforms to engage this rapidly growing audience, highlight the cultural and economic contributions of Hispanic consumers, and address the ongoing challenges of representation in media. Additionally, we will present case studies of platforms that have effectively captured the Hispanic market through tailored content and strategic partnerships, providing actionable insights for others in the industry.
Rising Hispanic Demographic and Its Entertainment Consumption
There are over 669 million Hispanics worldwide, and this group makes up nearly 9% of the global population. In the United States, which is at the forefront of TV streaming, the Hispanic demographic is growing rapidly. Over 62 million Hispanics now make up about 19% of the U.S. population, and this number is expected to rise to 26% by 2060. Beyond their cultural influence, U.S. Hispanics have a significant economic impact, with purchasing power estimated at $3 trillion, making them the equivalent of the fifth-largest economy in the world if they were a country.
U.S. Hispanics are not just economic powerhouses; they are also enthusiastic consumers of entertainment. They account for a quarter of both box office ticket sales and streaming subscribers. Additionally, they are heavy users of Connected TV (CTV) and Video on Demand (VOD), spending 12% more time on Film & TV streaming than the American average, but 15% less time on Linear TV.
Why is this?
Hispanic youth tend to prefer streaming services over traditional TV because streaming platforms offer more films and shows that resonate with them. However, many still feel underrepresented in the entertainment world. Traditional TV and its advertising often miss the mark in capturing and serving key cultural audiences accurately.
Despite this challenge, there are plenty of opportunities, and major companies are eager to seize them. By addressing the unique needs and preferences of Hispanic viewers, streaming platforms can tap into this growing and influential market segment.
Strategic Moves to Meet the Growing Demand for Hispanic TV Content
Having Hispanic TV and film content in most streamers’ libraries isn't something new. Streamers like Netflix, Pluto TV, Hulu, FuboTV, and others have offered Latinx content for quite some time. Many of these, along with other streamers and telecoms, offer Latinx packages alongside other subscription options. For example, Hulu and Sling TV offer Spanish-language and Hispanic-originated on-demand and TV content.
However, as the demand for Hispanic TV content continues to rise, other streaming platforms and media companies are making strategic moves to capture this expanding market.
In 2022, Peacock, NBCUniversal’s streaming service, partnered with Telemundo to offer a vast array of Hispanic content under a brand called Tplus. This brand is designed to cater to U.S. Hispanics. Beau Ferrari, the Chairman of NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises, stated that Tplus is for people who feel “100% Latino and 100% American.” Since Telemundo is part of NBCUniversal, this partnership seamlessly integrates Telemundo’s popular telenovelas, news, and sports programming into Peacock’s platform across all models: SVOD, AVOD, and FAST. This collaboration enhances Peacock's appeal to Hispanic audiences by leveraging Telemundo's established brand and extensive content library. Shows like "La Reina del Sur" and "Caso Cerrado" are now easily accessible to Peacock subscribers, providing a robust selection of content that resonates with Hispanic viewers.
For Netflix, the Hispanic route began in earnest in 2017 after it acquired the Spanish-produced crime drama series “Money Heist,” which became an exceptional success without any marketing dollars spent. It’s one of the most-watched non-English shows on Netflix ever. Interestingly, “Money Heist” wasn’t initially successful in Spain, but it gained international fame through Netflix. This success prompted Netflix to focus more on the Hispanic audience by signing deals with well-known creators like Alex Pina, the creator of “Money Heist.” More importantly, Netflix opened a Spanish-based production hub in Madrid, aiming to make Spain “the Hollywood of Europe.”
The European hub is a gem for Netflix, as the Spanish government welcomed the streamer with tax incentives and a plan to become an audio-visual hub in Europe. Netflix created more than 10,000 jobs and is set to launch more than 20 productions in 2024. So far, the Spanish content hub has been both successful and profitable. For example, the Spanish-produced drama film “Society of the Snow” has already earned multiple Oscar nominations and won numerous international awards, achieving 51 million views on Netflix in the first 11 days of its release. Meanwhile, “Nowhere” enjoyed similar international success last year, landing at the No. 2 spot among the streamer’s most popular non-English films, with more than 155 million hours watched. Another Netflix Spanish co-production, the binge-worthy series “Elite,” is headed into its eighth and final season. While it hasn’t won many awards, it has been a significant hit on social media.
Recognizing the growing demand for Hispanic content, TelevisaUnivision launched ViX in 2022, a dedicated AVOD and SVOD streaming platform for Hispanic audiences. ViX offers original and licensed content across various genres, including telenovelas, movies, live sports, and original series.
To further consolidate its offerings, ViX merged with Pantaya later in 2022. Pantaya was a leading streaming service for Hispanic content that had launched five years earlier. This merger combines Pantaya’s extensive library of movies and series with ViX’s diverse content portfolio, creating a comprehensive streaming service for Hispanic audiences. By joining forces, ViX together with Pantaya’s resources offer a richer and more varied selection of content, enhancing the viewing experience for their subscribers and expanding their reach within the Hispanic community. In fact, ViX ended 2023 with more than 7 million subscribers and recorded 50 million active monthly users.
ViX also follows the bundle trend by partnering with Charter Communications, the second-biggest cable operator in the U.S., to bring ViX premium AVOD content to Spectrum customers.
This strategic move to “eat” the competitor and partner with other companies to bundle has proven successful, as ViX has become a well-known and preferred Hispanic-centered streaming service, according to genuine discussions from real users on Reddit.
Warner Bros. Discovery has also been serving the Hispanic market with options like Discovery en Español, Discovery Familia, and Hogar de HGTV. In 2024, they launched 10 FAST (Free Ad-Supported Streaming TV) channels under the name “Más.” These channels aim to celebrate Hispanic heritage by “bringing fresh narratives, pioneering reality shows, and captivating documentaries that strike a chord with our diverse viewers.” The launch of these channels aims to attract advertisers hungry for relevant audiences.
Warner Bros. Discovery isn't alone in exploring the Hispanic market through FAST channels. Curiosity Stream has partnered with Spanish-language media company Estrella Media to bring Curiosity Español, Curiosity Animales, and Curiosity Motores FAST channels to Samsung TV Plus.
“In Spanish We Feel the Game” *
*Andrés Cantor, the Telemundo play-by-play announcer.
Premium sports rights are invaluable assets to entertainment services because they provide high-quality programming and consistently attract large, loyal audiences. Securing deals for live sports has been a key strategy for streaming platforms worldwide, and this importance doubles when targeting Hispanic viewers. An impressive 94% of Latinos claim to be sports fans, with more than 50% identifying as avid fans. Even that impressive figure can grow significantly, as casual sports fans present an opportunity for media companies to turn them into avid ones.
Additionally, Hispanic sports fans are a significant asset for brands and marketers, as over 75% of these fans have purchased sports-related merchandise from sponsors—a higher figure than for non-Hispanic fans.
The secret to attracting Hispanic sports fans is straightforward yet powerful and no different to any other community: make the audience feel welcomed and included. This approach was effectively demonstrated by the NBA with its "Ene-be-a Campaign" launched in 2008. The NBA employed several initiatives to engage its Hispanic community: they had a Hispanic lead in each department to ensure initiatives resonated with the audience, conducted studies to understand language preferences (Spanish, English, or both) for their website, team names, player names, and news articles, and hosted Latino nights with different teams and volunteer activities among Hispanic kids. As a result, the NBA’s U.S. Hispanic fan base grew by 9% within a year, outpacing the general growth of the Hispanic population by 125%.
In the last years, niche and mainstream TV platforms have been aggressively jumping into the Spanish sports rights game to fight for such a valuable, untapped, opportunistic and keen audience as Hispanics.
Earlier this year, ESPN, a major American sports channel, partnered with CONCACAF (the Confederation of North, Central America, and Caribbean Association Football) to secure exclusive Spanish-language broadcasting and streaming rights for the inaugural W Gold Cup. Offering all matches live on its ESPN+ streaming platform, the network provides Hispanic fans with unparalleled access to this significant women's soccer event. Given that soccer, or 'fútbol', is highly popular among Latinx audiences, this coverage ensures that fans can stay connected to their favourite teams and players from top teams in the CONCACAF region and South America, including soccer powerhouses like the USA, Brazil, and Canada.
ESPN is enhancing its soccer content by covering both men’s and women’s soccer comprehensively. Along with securing exclusive rights for the W Gold Cup, ESPN has expanded its offerings with rights to La Liga, Spain's premier professional soccer league. This deal extends until the end of the 2028/29 season and includes live and on-demand coverage of all 380 top-flight La Liga matches annually on ESPN+ and select games from La Liga SmartBank, the second tier of Spanish soccer, which includes crucial promotion playoff matches. This makes ESPN+ one of the go-to destination for Spanish soccer in the United States.
Yet another niche, sport-oriented TV streamer, DAZN, has carved out a slice of Spanish sports entertainment. This time, they've secured a multi-year broadcasting deal with Spain’s largest MMA League, the AFL. This ground-breaking agreement marks the first time the AFL, a pioneer in Spanish MMA, has partnered directly with an OTT streaming service like DAZN.
What about mainstream, non-sports-oriented streamers?
Well, mainstreamers like the earlier-mentioned Peacock have also been fighting for (and benefiting from) Hispanic sports fans. The 5 million growth in Peacock's subscribers at the end of 2022 can be attributed, in part, to its sports content, which includes broadcasts aimed at Hispanic audiences, such as the FIFA World Cup aired on Telemundo, according to representatives from its parent company, Comcast.
Peacock decided to spread its wings and tackle the next Spanish sport-related opportunity. It will livestream all Telemundo and Universo Olympics 2024 programming, offering the most extensive Spanish-language streaming experience for the Olympics in U.S. media history. In addition to the live events, Peacock will feature full-event replays and exclusive short-form content in Spanish, curated for Hispanic audiences around the most relevant events, athletes, and countries competing in Paris. The networks will be following and covering the Hispanic athletes expected to soar in Paris from around the world.
And, of course, who better to think about Hispanic sports entertainment than the Mexican American media company TelevisaUnivision? This company creates very tough competition for all other streamers fighting for the Hispanic audience. In fact, the amount the company currently spends on premium sports rights is the highest among all its expenditures, driving the growth of its streaming platform ViX.
This year it expanded its soccer and football offering. The platform will stream all matches of CONMEBOL Copa America 2024 and UEFA EURO 2024, offering comprehensive Spanish-language coverage of these premier soccer tournaments. Additionally, ViX will feature UEFA Champions League, Europa League, and Europa Conference League matches for the next three years. And importantly, ViX broadcast Super Bowl LVIII live in Spanish, marking a significant milestone as it aired for the first time on Univision. As the president of TelevisaUnivision’s sports Carlos Loewenstein said: “We are not doing the Super Bowl in Spanish, we are doing the Super Bowl in culture.”
As a result, Super Bowl LVIII really broke new ground with its Spanish-language broadcast, hitting a record high with an average viewership of 2.3 million and peaking at 2.6 million on Univision. This was a significant milestone since it's the most watched since the NFL started broadcasting in Spanish in the U.S. back in 2014, even beating Telemundo's previous record. What's more, over 70% of the Hispanic audience tuning into the Super Bowl on TelevisaUnivision hadn't watched any of the NFL playoffs, showing how the big game really pulled in a fresh audience. This broad new viewership is not only great news for the league but also spells potential growth for TelevisaUnivision and its platform, as pointed out by their CEO, Wade Davis. He emphasized how this successful broadcast is part of a growing partnership with the NFL, hinting at more exciting things to come.
Authentic Latinx Representation is Key to Growth in Hispanic TV Streaming
Overall, the future of Hispanic TV streaming is bright, with endless opportunities for growth and collaboration. Its growth underscores the immense potential and influence of Hispanic audiences in the digital entertainment landscape. As this demographic continues to grow and assert its economic power, streaming platforms are making concerted efforts to cater to their preferences and interests. However, to truly capture the Latinx audience, it is not enough to merely offer Latinx content. Streaming services must recognize and celebrate the richness of Hispanic culture, addressing the diverse countries, cultures, and appearances that make up this vibrant community. This diversity should be reflected in both the content acquired and produced.
Strategic moves by leading platforms demonstrate a commitment to providing diverse, culturally relevant content that resonates with Hispanic viewers. By investing in original productions and forming partnerships that ensure authenticity, these platforms are not only enhancing their content libraries but also fostering a deeper connection with their audience.
The success of these initiatives is evident in the rising demand for Hispanic content, particularly in the drama genre, which accounts for about half of the most-watched content across Latin America, Spain, and U.S. Hispanics. This preference for drama stems from a lack of authentic Latino portrayals in many of television’s most-watched genres. As content becomes more relevant and representative, there is hope for a diversification in genre preferences among Hispanic viewers.
Additionally, significant investments in premium sports rights highlight the importance of sports content in attracting and retaining Hispanic subscribers, who, on average, enjoy watching sports more than other audiences.
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