Baidu and Rakuten strike online video deal

Viki, the online video service owned by Japanese ecommerce group Rakuten, will this week bring TV shows and movies from around the world to China through a partnership with the country's largest search engine Baidu.

The agreement, which highlights how the internet is changing the way TV content is distributed, gives Viki access to a country that remains untapped by rival streaming sites such as Netflix and YouTube.

Under the deal, Viki will bring licensed shows from the US, UK, Japan, Korea and 11 other countries to Baidu Video, China's largest video site.

The content - such as Falling Skies, the science fiction series produced by Steven Spielberg - will be subtitled in both Chinese and English thanks to Viki's community of volunteer translators.

Viki specialises in licensing television content for online distribution outside of the home market. What makes the company unique is that it can provide subtitles in more than 100 languages due to the efforts of its international community of viewers.

Under their partnership, Viki and Baidu will share the advertising revenues derived from the videos.

Razmig Hovaghimian, Viki's chief executive and co-founder, said that while TV and film rights holders had traditionally viewed "the long tail" of international markets as relatively unimportant, this was starting to change.

"If you open up the rest of the world and get subtitles on it, it's a massive market," he said.

Mr Hovaghimian said the fourth series of Falling Skies, which is due to be released next summer, will be available for viewing in China within 48 hours of its broadcast in the US.

"We also want to take Chinese content to the rest of the world with 150 languages subtitled," he added.

China is the world's largest video market with 450m online video viewers, or nearly 80 per cent of its internet-connected population, according to Viki.

The company, which was acquired by Rakuten in September for an undisclosed sum, said it attracts more than 26m viewers each month and that its community of fans has translated more than 450m words.

Online video streaming has become one of the fastest-growing parts of the media sector, with subscription services such as Netflix and advertising-funded services such as Hulu starting to challenge traditional broadcasters.

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