In a "sign of its rapidly maturing VOD market," Mexico’s "most prominent" football team Chivas is launching its own OTT platform on July 1, just weeks before the next Liga MX games kick off on July 23, according to Anna Marie de la Fuente of VARIETY. Based in Mexico’s second-largest city, Guadalajara, "the team is owned by Mexican billionaire Jorge Vergara, founder of dietary supplement firm Omnilife and a sometime film producer." Vergara, who purchased the Chivas club in '02, announced in May that the club "would not renew its broadcasting pact with Televisa, thus ending a 22-year run." Chivas TV/Omnilife Dir General & CEO Jose Luis Higuera said, “In just the past eight years, Televisa paid us $14.8 million annually for broadcast rights to our games. This year, they offered to pay us only $6 million, which is absurd. The Chivas club has up to 40 million fans worldwide, that’s why we’re starting this channel.” Chivas TV will be available worldwide "but only partly in the U.S. where Spanish-language network Univision has the U.S. broadcasting rights to Chivas games for the next two years, after which they will revert back to Chivas." Until then, only "complementary programming will be streaming in the U.S." Higuera said that in the short term, Chivas TV "will feature Chivas games as well as pre-game build up, post-game analysis and those of club’s lower-category teams." In the longer term, "other sports news will be included." Chivas TV joins the growing OTT market in Mexico "which is currently dominated by SVOD giant Netflix, followed by local streaming platforms ClaroVideo, owned by billionaire Carlos Slim’s America Movil, and most recently Televisa’s Blim" (VARIETY, 6/20).
