Riding on its Big Game success, Tubi sets its sights on the U.K.

It may carry plenty of niche comedies, but after livestreaming the Super Bowl this year, Tubi is no laughingstock in the minds of viewers and advertisers alike as it sets its sights beyond the U.S.

Tubi’s growing footprint in Canada, Central America, Australia and New Zealand has helped it amass 97 million monthly active users. It’s now going after even more viewers in Latin America and the U.K., a market where it’s already playing in the big leagues.

Less than a year after its relaunch in the U.K., Tubi is taking viewership from other FAST platforms, namely Paramount’s Pluto TV and Amazon’s Freevee. To hear Ross Appleton, Tubi’s U.K. head, tell it during a session at MIP London last week, much of Tubi’s success comes from its enormous library populated with niche titles, which forms the basis of its “Watch what you actually want to watch” slogan.

Tubi CEO Anjali Sud said last year that the service’s U.K. movie library was “10 times bigger than other broadcasters,” focusing on the “weird, wonderful and colorful” content that Tubi says appeals to audiences underserved by mainstream streamers.

At The Trade Desk’s Forward 25 event in New York last week, Sud emphasized the company is focused on providing advertisers with incremental and hard-to-reach audiences. “In service of our audience and in service of our brands, nothing is sacred to us,” she said. “Expect the unexpected.”

That ethos has helped Tubi attract a young audience in the U.K. — 40% of its viewers are aged 18-34, over-indexing compared to the country’s 18-34 population ratio of 23%, according to figures shared by Appleton.

On the platform, cult flicks like mind-bending horror/thriller Donnie Darko and Timothée Chalamet’s romantic drama Call Me by Your Name sit alongside curated sections like “Nollywood Naija,” “Art-House Films” and “K-Drama +.”

“Whatever you’re into, we’ll have it,” Appleton said.

But the Fox-owned streamer isn’t resting. While it is “not commissioning originals for the U.K. service right now,” the exec said, “the content proposition for the U.K. will evolve and reflect the U.K. more.”

Underpinning its content slate is Fox’s tech might, on showcase during its Super Bowl livestream, which attracted 15.5 million concurrent viewers. Appleton compared it to Netflix’s snags during its Jake Paul-Mike Tyson boxing fight, though that livestream brought in 65 million concurrent streams.

“The tech platform is fantastic, with best-in-class machine learning and personalization that I think rivals anyone,” Appleton said.

Still, there are challenges. For one, the U.K.’s free TV landscape differs markedly from the U.S., where Tubi is finding huge success. That’s because British audiences can access scores of free TV channels by simply plugging into their aerial antennas, which are widespread in British homes. That puts Tubi’s service in direct competition with the likes of the BBC and ITV, in addition to Pluto TV and Freevee.

But in a diverse country like the U.K., Tubi’s focus on catering to what it deems to be underserved audiences could pay off — while giving advertisers a new avenue to reach them.

“We’ll serve you things you like and love,” Appleton said. “We’re not trying to move and push and create culture, we reflect it.”

The Current is owned and operated by The Trade Desk.