ESCAPE Axiata Sdn Bhd a fully owned subsidiary of Celcom Axiata Berhad announced their entry as broadcast sponsors of the Barclays Premier League (BPL) in partnerships with Astro SuperSport and FOX Sports.
[(L to R) Dato’ Sri Shazalli Ramly, Chief Executive Officer of Celcom Axiata Berhad, Henry Tan, Chief Operating Officer of Astro, Keertan Adyanthya, General Manager FOX International Channels Malaysia. Dato’ Sri Shazalli Ramly, Henry Tan and Keertan Adyanthaya hold up different mobile devices to illustrate a key feature of ESCAPE where it is available across multiple devices.]
Via the partnership, subscribers are able to enjoy various forms of game content created, produced and packaged to suit a digital mobile lifestyle. Subscribers can watch the live broadcasts in high resolution. They can also enjoy the highlights of past matches where ESCAPE’s unique “pause and play” feature becomes an advantage.
Dato’ Sri Shazalli Ramly, Chief Executive Officer of Celcom Axiata Berhad, observes, “Even as a major mobile telecommunications player in Malaysia, we recognised early on that we cannot be competitive within an “ego-system”; rather, we are evolving within an ecosystem of other service providers, local producers and international content to provide the best personal entertainment experience to our customers.”
He said that Celcom does not intend to be a content producer, however the mobile operator is willing to work with content owners. “We will be creating the broadcast stream, but we will never be a production house”.
ESCAPE, launched in August last year, is an online entertainment portal created for Celcom’s 13 million subscribers to watch movies, TV Series, LiveTV and events streaming on their smartphone, tablet, laptop and PC.
The service is available for Android and iOS devices.
Customers will have to be an Astro On-the-Go subscriber to watch Astro SuperSpot on Celcom ESCAPE. Celcom did not disclose all the pricing details however said that some of the contents such as video on demand will be made available for free.
On the back of this partnership announcement, there will be a line of activities in store for subscribers, from viewing parties to more offerings such as immediate mobile access to football-related content and information.
Dato’ Sri Shazalli Ramly told MalaysianWireless that Celcom will be investing about RM40 million in ESCAPE contents this year.
