content distribution ses platform services
Luxembourg-based satellite operator SES is well-known for its global supply of capacity. Back in 2004 SES acquired Digital Playout Centre, founded in 1996 by Leo Kirch, and created to supply Kirch Group’s Premiere pay-TV operation and then Sky Deutschland with technical services including playout, asset management and uplinking to its satellites. Since then Astra Platform Services as it was known, and now under its new name of SES Platform Services (SPS), has won a significant number of interesting contracts. However, SES now intends to rapidly expand its reach into the services and facilities market. It has already placed staff in Johannesburg, Singapore and the USA, and is looking to invest in further expansion in Latin America, India and elsewhere, and to tap into what SPS CEO Wilfred Urner describes as a logical next step for the fast-growing business, and well beyond traditional organic growth. Chris Forrester reports.
SES to ‘make life easier’ for broadcasters
or Africa, we are just one amongst many. If you cannot offer more to potential clients, and we can talk about what ‘more’ is, then we might not win the business. ‘More’ might include any number of incentives, or capacity agreements, or service bundles. This might include ensuring that the client gets to market a little sooner, or help with their business models, or aid them with their technology development. But what we have to avoid is stepping into their businesses. They are the broadcasters, not us.” He adds that this new expansion
L
ast year SPS invested in a purpose-built facility, adjacent to its existing building, and is part of what is increasingly seen as the central campus of Germany’s broadcasters, at
Unterföhring, near Munich in Bavaria, Germany. SPS CEO Wilfred Urner says the
investment is more than paying off, helped by major recent contract wins with players like TopTV in South Africa, the Pro7 Group in Germany and news
8 l ibe l september/october 2012 l
www.ibeweb.com
The master control room at SES
Platform Services (SPS).
broadcaster N24 in Berlin, and with more in the pipeline. He admits that some industry players see playout and their related services as near- commoditised: “It is hard for some at SES, especially when you remember that 25 years ago few would have thought that the satellite business would ever have become a kind of commodity. But it has. In Europe we have an excellent position because of our powerful broadcast neighborhoods but looking to Asia, or Latin America,
strategy might mean competing head to head with some very well established facility players such as Arqiva or GlobeCast, but he is also looking to build new relationships with these same names. “GlobeCast and Arqiva are typical in that they are already sometimes partners, as well as customers and sometimes also competitors. However this is pretty normal in our industry. It could mean a challenge in some markets and for very few customers. But as we are mostly playing in different fields or value chains this has never become a major issue up to now and we do not expect it to become a real issue.”
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