Verticast, the Caribbean’s newest media group, has already hit the ground running having secured the broadcast rights to this year’s staging of the English Premier League. 

CEO and President of Verticast Media Group, Oliver McIntosh, says the company has a projected launch between July 1-15, long before the first whistle for the August football competition season begins. 

Securing the broadcast rights for the Premier League is a move that the company’s CEO said signals its readiness to shakeup the region’s media landscape. 

McIntosh is a veteran in the Caribbean media landscape having founded the very successful SportsMax in 2002. 

Fragmented industry

Speaking on Taking Stock with Kalilah Reynolds, he said that the region’s growth in the media industry has been stunted by the fragmented nature of how business is currently conducted.

In addition to there being little to no cooperation across countries, he noted that the separation of free-to-air and paid television, radio and streaming broadcast has slowed the growth of the Caribbean’s media industry.

According to McIntosh, Verticast aims to solve this by creating an integrated content production and distribution company that will broadcast across the Caribbean.

“That’s really the vision that we have for Verticast; how do we pull together local and international content and marry that with regional distribution across the Caribbean plus local in each market,” he explained.

The CEO said that the company’s distribution platforms will be announced soon as well as plans for its streaming efforts. He noted that streaming in the Caribbean is essentially nonexistent, with many creators turning to platforms like YouTube to distribute their content.

Original content 

According to McIntosh, the company will produce original content and acquire the rights to air others from a range of genres.

“We’re not only doing sports, we’re doing general entertainment, including scripted shows,  information and news, talk shows,” he noted.

He said that in order to streamline the content, Verticast will have multiple apps to make it easier for consumers to find exactly what they are looking for at all times. He added that there will be a “significant amount” of live productions, a fact which he said will separate Verticast’s apps from platforms like Netflix. 

The CEO stressed that while based in Jamaica, Verticast is a Caribbean media company and the content will reflect the entire region as best as possible. 

In regards to the pricing to gain access to Verticast’s platform, McIntosh said the company is still in talks with stakeholders.

He noted that an undertaking like Verticast requires significant investment to get off the ground, but the company is cognizant of the market they are in and the economic realities of their potential customers.

One thing he did note, however, was that Verticast would try to avoid using the pay-to-play business model, which would see creators paying the company to air their content, as practiced by many local broadcast stations. 

“I think that we have a duty to provide an outlet for the independent programme producers. That being said, what we will do is look at creative ways to structure agreements with a content producer, so that they get the distribution and we figure out how we all share in the spoils,” he explained.

McIntosh said that for the company to be successful, it will take collaboration on multiple levels, but he said he believes that the Caribbean has the talent and skill to compete in North American markets and come out on top.

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