Fandango is known to most users as a web and mobile ticketing service, but it’s also been creating its own web TV shows. Today, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, it’s announcing that those programs are coming to Hulu, in what Fandango says is its first partnership with a subscription video-on-demand service.
The new channel on Hulu will feature Fandango’s movie-focused shows, including an awards-focused interview program called Frontrunners. The channel is scheduled to go live sometime in the first three months of this year — and to be clear, it will be available to anyone visiting Hulu, not just paying subscribers.
Mark Young, Fandango’s vice president of business development and strategy, told me that this is the next step in Fandango’s strategy to create videos that can be played on “any form factor or platform.” (At last year’s CES, the company announced that it would be embedding ticketing capabilities and video on Samsung’s Internet-connected TVs.)
“Our goal is to be wherever there’s conversations about movies, with partners that have scale and are in the right context,” he added.
And yes, that means Fandango could strike similar deals with similar services. However, Young said Hulu made sense as a starting place because it introduces an element of movie discovery to a service that’s largely been about TV discovery. (It doesn’t hurt that Fandango is owned by NBCUniversal, which is also one of Hulu’s backers.)
As for why Fandango is creating these shows at all, Young said they help the company move beyond being a mere utility. The shows can lead people to buy movie tickets, and the company makes money from ads as well.
Is that strategy paying off? The company says that views of original video content on Fandango has grown 38 percent year-over-year. (That original content category excludes Movieclips, which Fandango acquired last year, and which sees 230 million views each month.)
