CBS To Expand its OTT Service Internationally, Also Plans to Add a Sports Channel
CBS All Access, CBS’ streaming platform, is gearing up to take on the international market starting with Canada.
“There is a huge opportunity for CBS to go direct-to-consumer on a much bigger scale worldwide,” CBS Corp. CEO Leslie Moonves said during the company’s second quarter earnings call. CBS All Access would be available in Canada by the first half of 2018 and would expand to more countries on multiple continents, according t0 Moonves.
It was also announced that CBS All Access and the Showtime standalone service are expected to exceed 4 million subscribers in total by the end of this year. If estimates are correct, that puts the company well on the way to meeting its goal of 8 million total OTT subscribers by 2020, something that now seems like an easy target.
“We’re more than halfway to our goal for 2020, which is obviously quite conservative now,” Moonves said in the call.

Additionally, the company revealed that it is developing a sports channel for CBS All Access. Not many details were released, but it was confirmed that the soon-to-be named channel would be leveraging CBS’ existing sports operations.
This new sports channel is part of the companies recent efforts to boost up its OTT offering which, starting Sept. 24, will include the first Star Trek TV series in 11 years; a calculated decision to grow OTT subscribers, according to Moonves.
