ZATTOO paved the way for TV streaming when it was founded in 2005. As the world’s first Live TV streaming platform, ZATTOO managed the unimaginable. With ZATTOO, users could stream TV online, legally and for free, well before major US companies ever offered films and series online. ZATTOO is celebrating its 15 year anniversary this June, so to mark the occasion, we’re taking a look back through history at the key events over these 15 years that helped shape ZATTOO to become Europe’s number 1 streaming platform.
2005 was an eventful year: Angela Merkel became Germany’s chancellor, the video portal YouTube was set up and the Airbus A380 took its maiden flight. 2005 also marked the year in which ZATTOO came into being with the vision of steaming free, legally licensed TV online. Just one year later, and with only a dozen employees, ZATTOO started providing services in Switzerland starting with the opening game of the FIFA 2006 World Cup between Germany and Costa Rica on 9 June. ZATTOO was the first provider in the world to bring live TV to the PC. Expansion into Germany followed a year later. By 2007, over one million users were using ZATTOO to stream TV via the internet.
ZATTOO experienced mixed fortunes over the next number of years with the expansion of the platform to more and more devices, a growing number of channels in the offering and a steady increase in the number of users on the platform. All of this culminated with the expansion of the platform to additional European markets between 2007 and 2009. However, the financial crisis of 2008 began to put ZATTOO’s business model sternly to the test, the consequences of which was the decision to withdraw from all but the Swiss and German markets in 2009.
The era of consumers sitting in front of the television at set times was already starting to become a thing of the past. In 2010, ZATTOO launched its first replay / catch-up service in Switzerland enabling users to watch events from the last 30 days of broadcast of a channel, which was further extended with the introduction of cloud based recordings, live restart and timeshift to the feature set, which was later also offered to German subscribers. For the last couple of years, ZATTOO offers subscription based Video on Demand offering to its users, which has since grown to include more and more collections of unique content available on a monthly subscription basis.
Utilising the many years of experience garnered by its end customer business, ZATTOO formed a B2B division in 2012, going on to provide completely hosted and managed IPTV, OTT, TV Everywhere and Hybrid TV services for network operators and media companies. The B2B division currently serves over 30 customers (including 1&1, Salt Mobile, Eir), making it one of the most successful TV-as-a-service platforms in Europe.
The end customer business continued to grow too, reaching approximately 1.8 million subscribers during the 2016 UEFA European Cup, a new record. One of the reasons behind this was the huge increase in the distribution and availability of large TV screens. Since then, ZATTOO has continued to develop and expand its service targeting Smart TV’s, Amazon Fire TV, Xbox One, Android TV and Apple TV in order to offer a best in class TV streaming service. With the launch of the Ultimate subscription plan in 2018, ZATTOO was creating a more attractive product for large living room screens with the inclusion of Full HD channels from broadcasters.
“With three million monthly users, we're not only the leading TV streaming provider in Europe; our B2B company makes us a leading partner for international telecommunications companies. For 15 years, we have been developing modern TV products for constantly-developing internet technologies in an increasingly digital media landscape. This strategy will ensure we remain on a growth trajectory in future”, said Nick Brambring, CEO at ZATTOO.
ZATTOO has continued to develop over the last number of years. From a live TV service for the PC all the way to a leading live and on demand TV service for televisions in the living room and on mobile devices. From an advertising-financed direct-to-consumer provider, ZATTOO has become one of the first real end to end, multi-national and multi-client TV platform operators. As a leading innovator, ZATTOO is succeeding now as it was then in making a significant contribution to the development of the TV industry. ZATTOO gained recognition for this achievement in 2020 with the awarding of the Technology and Engineering Emmy® Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences
More information on the anniversary can be found at thetvplatform.zattoo.com/15th-birthday.
About Zattoo With more than 30 customers and several million active users per month, Zattoo is one of the leading TV-as-a- Service platforms in Europe. Its customers include Tier 1 operators like 1&1 in Germany, eir in Ireland, Salt in Switzerland and Monaco Telecom, for whom Zattoo offers fully hosted and managed IPTV, OTT and TV Everywhere services. The focus is on a White Label product with state-of-the-art features and applications for all relevant devices and covering all common ones: Android TV for operator set- top boxes as well as Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Smart TVs and mobile devices (iOS / Android / Windows 10). Zattoo gained recognition for its achievements in 2020 with the awarding of the Technology and Engineering Emmy® Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.
Contact Hanns Schempp, Head of Marketing TVP hanns.schempp@zattoo.com
