New content seen to boost TV5 revenue

MANILA, Philippines — TV5 Network Inc. expects to generate income from new digital properties in the second half and achieve break even by next year.

TV5 president Vincent Reyes is hopeful the Philippine ESPN.com site which hosts sports content and subscription sports streaming service ESPN Player, both launched in January, would start making an impact on the network’s revenue by the second half.

“I think starting the second half, we will get some scale in our digital revenues,” he said.

Advertising revenues are coming in since the launch of ESPN5.com, according to Reyes.

“It’s not as big as we want it to be, but we’re barely two months in existence so that will take time to even grow some more. But we really like the prospect,” he said.

Reyes also said the company has achieved targets for airtime revenue and operational expenses in the first quarter.

The company remains optimistic in meeting the break even target by next year, according to Reyes.

“By the end of 2019, hopefully we can achieve break even already,” he said.

To meet the break even target, TV5 aims to cut losses by 50 percent this year.

The TV network reduced its net losses by 43 percent last year from 2016.

Last year, TV5 partnered with ESPN in line with a strategy to reposition itself as a sports and news channel to hit its break even goal.

The partnership involved the rebranding of Sports 5 to ESPN 5 to air TV5’s sports coverage, as well as more than 2,500 hours of additional programming per year from ESPN’s portfolio of sports rights, original programming and studio programs, to help increase the company’s share in advertising revenues from sports.