Tubi signs deal with Hisense for “prominent” placing within OS

AVOD Tubi has signed a deal with TV maker Hisense to offer its library on the new Vidaa platform.

The offering will be available in the US, Canada, Australia and the UK – where the streamer will launch early in 2020. The company said that new Hisense TVs with Cidaa will have Tubi preloaded and “prominently placed” within the operating system.

Michael Ahiakpor, chief product officer at Tubi said: “We’re excited to expand Tubi’s device footprint to include Hisense televisions with the new Vidaa platform, continuing our mission to make entertainment more accessible to everyone. Hisense has been a global leader in consumer electronics and is a perfect partner as we ramp up our international expansion in 2020.”

It was announced in September that users had streamed more than 132 million hours of content. In total, the Lionsgate-backed Tubi has a content library of over 20,000 movies and TV series.

This is the latest distribution deal for Tubi, and follows news of an arrangement with Amazon that sees the AVOD available on Echo Show smart screen devices.

The company will hope that a deal with Hisense – which it says is the third-largest TV manufacturer in the world – will give it an edge in an increasingly crowded AVOD space. The most recent player to launch in the UK was W4Free, backed by well-respected industry veteran Chris Sharp.