ShortlyFestival launches with Red Bee's OTT platform - enabling film festivals across the globe to reach international audiences

ShortlyFestival aims to help film festivals all over the world reach new audiences and monetize their content by streaming films, interviews and other videos on-demand, during and after an event. The newly launched service is built on Red Bee Media’s managed OTT platform and will offer different pay-per-view options to access the content. In 2020, the Nordic International Film Festival in New York, Rex Animation Festival in Sweden and the French Film Festival in Sweden have already signed up and many more are on the way. 

Although ShortlyFestival was conceived before Covid-19 hit, the global pandemic has shed increased light on the value for film festivals of expanding audience reach outside the physical event.

“With the help of the team at Red Bee and their OTT platform, we have been able to create a professional streaming offering for film festivals of all sizes who want to bring their content to new and extended audiences”, says Eva Thunell, CEO & Founder of Shortly and ShortlyFestival “We are definitely seeing an increased interest in our service since Covid-19, and we expect to sign up many new festivals, in the months and years to come.”

Together with Red Bee, ShortlyFestival can offer film festivals a wide range of monetization options for their content, including pay-per-view for individual films and daily or weekly passes for broader ranges of content throughout a festival. The content can be made available on most devices either through web browsers or dedicated applications for IOS and Android.

“Streaming directly to the consumer continues to be a growing trend, with Covid-19 as an accelerating factor. ShortlyFestival is a great example of how our OTT Platform can be used to reach new audiences and monetize content”, says Steve Russell, Head of OTT & Media Management, Red Bee Media. “We are looking forward to share our expertise with ShortlyFestival and their customers while bringing a red-carpet festival experience to viewers at home.”

Red Bee’s comprehensive OTT Platform gives brands and content owners the possibility to launch a fully-fledged streaming service, rapidly and easily. It supports all content formats including linear, live, catch-up and on-demand as well as the full range of monetization options (including ad-funded, subscription, pay-per-view and vouchers). The service integrates easily with many other Red Bee services including content aggregation, metadata and automatic captioning. The platform also includes advanced geo blocking and DRM options, which allows for audience segmentation

ShortlyFestival was created by the founders of the short film streaming service Shortly, where creators can share their content with audiences for free at http://shortly.film. All festivals hosted by ShortlyFestival will be available at https://shortly.film/festival/.