Netflix and Amazon may soon have a new rival in the streaming video market.
Overstock.com, the discount online retailer and Amazon wannabe, plans to get in the game. At a television industry conference in Miami, company CEO Patrick Byrne said the company will launch a video-on-demand service — a la Apple’s iTunes — in the middle of this year. Overstock will follow that later with a streaming video service.
“We will be a competitor to Amazon,” Byrne said.
Overstock’s video service will be available to members of its loyalty program, he said, indicating that the company plans to make that a key point of differentiation with Amazon’s rival service. Overstock charges about $20 a year for its Club O rewards program, which provides members with free shipping and discounts on their orders. By contrast, Amazon charges about $100 a year for its comparable Prime program.
“We think our loyalty program is better than Amazon’s,” Byrne said. “We pay people back for their digital downloads.”
The video services will be operated by an outside company, he said. At launch, the video-on-demand service will have about 30,000 titles. Following a path laid by Netflix and Amazon, Overstock also plans to offer original videos through its service, Byrne said.
The company’s strategy follows Amazon’s model, albeit nearly a decade later. Amazon launched its digital video store in 2006, selling and renting videos on an a la carte basis. In 2011, it launched a streaming video service that’s available to members of its Prime subscription program, which also gives them discounted shipping.
That’s not a bad strategy to follow. Amazon has established itself as the second leading paid streaming video company behind market gorilla Netflix.
H/T to The Hollywood Reporter.
Overstock.com logo courtesy of the company.
