JustWatch is moving beyond telling people where to stream movies and TV shows and will soon start streaming them itself. The company is launching JustWatch TV in October, turning its established discovery platform into a direct streaming destination for the first time.
The new service will be built directly into JustWatch’s existing apps and website, allowing users to move from searching for a title to watching eligible content without jumping to another platform. JustWatch TV will combine free ad-supported streaming with transactional rentals and an ad-free subscription option, giving the company an unusually broad mix of AVOD, TVOD and subscription models under one service.
Paramount, New Regency, Fremantle, Bleecker Street and Vortex Media are among the initial content partners, although JustWatch has yet to reveal the full launch catalogue, subscription pricing or individual rental costs. Those details will be important in determining whether JustWatch TV becomes a meaningful streaming destination or remains primarily an extension of the company’s discovery business.
The move makes strategic sense. JustWatch says its streaming guide reaches more than 50 million monthly users across 140 markets and tracks availability for more than 500,000 movies and TV shows across over 1,500 services. More importantly, more than a decade of searches and viewing-intent data potentially gives the company a detailed picture of what audiences are actively trying to find.
JustWatch says it plans to use those insights to shape the new service’s catalogue, including both mainstream films and harder-to-find titles. That could give JustWatch TV a useful point of differentiation in a market where viewers increasingly have to navigate content spread across numerous subscriptions, rental stores and free streaming platforms.
There is an interesting balancing act involved, however. JustWatch built its usefulness around being a relatively neutral gateway directing viewers toward other streaming services. Becoming a streaming provider itself means it will now appear alongside the platforms it helps consumers search. The company says users will still be able to discover titles available elsewhere rather than being funnelled exclusively toward JustWatch TV.
The initial rollout covers the US and Canada, UK and Ireland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Italy, Spain, Australia and New Zealand. Notably, the UAE is not currently included despite JustWatch operating an office in Dubai.
JustWatch TV therefore represents more than another streaming-service launch. It is an attempt to turn years of audience discovery data into an actual content business, while preserving the platform-agnostic search experience that made JustWatch useful in the first place.
