Cine.ar Play doubles views and users during 2020

Argentine telecommunications company Arsat reported this last Friday figures regarding the Cine.ar Play’s content consumption, a platform with films, series, documentaries and short films made in the country, developed by the entity and the Cinema and Audiovisual Arts National Institute (INCAA), with data based on the January-July 2020 period.

During the period, the OTT achieved growth compared to the same months of 2019: this year it recorded more than 1.6 million views, compared to the almost 830 thousand reported in the same period last year. Also, according to ARSAT, the unique users who saw content on the platform this year were 560.7 thousand, against almost 250 thousand last year; and the monthly users who joined the OTT in 2020 were almost 400 thousand, compared to 184.5 thousand who did so between January and July 2019. Likewise, users who entered saw 939.5 thousand hours of content, against 517. 2 of the first seven months of last year; and there were more than 5.4 million views of the OTT website, compared to 2.2 that did last year.

Another issue that ARSAT highlighted in its report is the number of users connected simultaneously to the platform in July, in relation to June, where figures close to doubling were reported: 2,369 users in July, compared to 1,204 in June . Likewise, during the January-July period of this year, the catalog of movies available for AR$ 30 (USD 0.41) exceeded 26 thousand rentals, a higher figure than the 18,242 recorded throughout 2019.

Likewise, from its launch to July 2020, Cine.ar Play reported almost 1.67 million registered users, with 8.67 million views, representing more than 5.2 million hours of viewing of Argentine productions, and 19.2 million visits on its website. The content offer available on the ‘Estrenos’ catalog, until July this year,  436 films, with an average of 10 new productions that are added to the platform monthly. Likewise, rentals every 30 days grew from 1,520 to 3,700, if the period of January and July 2019 is compared with the same months of 2020. The title that had the highest historical number of views from 2017 to date was the series ‘La chica que limpia’, with 311,662 reproductions. At the same time, if only the ‘Jueves Estreno’ area is taken into account, the most demanded film was ‘Yo, Adolescente’ (Lucas Santa Ana), which recorded 48 thousand views during its exhibition week.

‘When, together with INCAA, we launched ODEON (today Cine.ar Play), we were convinced that the platform would be successful, since Argentine cinema has a very high level and attracts not only audiences in the country, but also abroad. But the results we got also exceeded our initial expectations’, said Guillermo Rus, Director at ARSAT. ‘Currently, we have multiple challenges to improve and enhance Cine.ar Play, including strengthening the operation of the platform, increasing its features and providing it with a greater quantity and diversity of audiovisual content produced in Argentina’, he concluded. Cine.ar Play is available on iOS and Android mobile devices; LG and Samsung smart TVs, and others.