Alibaba is planning to build TBO as its own Netflix version

Jun 15, 2015 09:43 GMT  ·  By

The Alibaba Group has announced that it plans to build an online video streaming platform in what many people are claiming to be a Netflix clone.

With Alibaba's recent decision, the Chinese online video streaming business is already getting crowded, and Netflix hasn't even entered the market yet.

The online retailer plans to beat Netflix to the punch and get as much of the market as it can gobble up before the world's leading online video streamer manages to go around all the legal hurdles an American company needs to go through before entering the Chinese market.

The new service will be called TBO

"Our mission, the mission of all of Alibaba, is to redefine home entertainment. Our goal is to become like HBO in the United States, to become like Netflix in the United States," said Patrick LiuLiu, Alibaba’s Head of Digital Entertainment.

Probably because of this, the new service will also be called TBO, as in Tmall Box Office. Tmall coming from Tmall.com, a B2C online retail website owned by the Alibaba Group.

TBO will feature a mixed offering, providing both original content created by the company and movies from Chinese and abroad producers.

10% of the catalog will be freely accessible to any user, while the other 90% can be accessed using show-by-show fees or monthly subscriptions.

Keeping an eye on Netflix

Back in May 2015, Netflix revealed it was planning to enter the Chinese market via Jack Ma’s Wasu Media Holding, but no timeline has been provided for this move, the company focusing its efforts on the Euro zone at this time.

Since Jack Ma is also the chairman of the Alibaba Group, you can expect these plans to be scraped at Netflix's offices.

Future Netflix markets include Italy, Spain, and Portugal for October 2015, and the Czech Republic for 2016. It is probably fair to expect that Netflix won't be coming to China sooner than 2016.