Competing with the Hollywood big boys may seem like a daunting task to most, but for Gary Delfiner, creator of WatchFreeFlix — the publisher across multiple platforms of genre-sorted AVOD (advertising-based video on demand, which is free to consumers) movies — it was a leap of faith worth taking.
If it seems like every month a new subscription channel from a studio, network or production company pops up offering consumers something that their competitors presumably don’t, that’s because they are. But Delfiner has proven that when David gets in the ring with Goliath, the little guy can win out. His strategy for building and maintaining a successful and thriving business in the movie streaming world: go simple, go specific and, oh yeah, “free is a very good price,” as he puts it.
“You don’t have to be a studio or a youth player to have a successful business in this environment, but if you pay attention and you take a look at the trends and you start some of your own and you’re committed, which means you put your money where your mouth is, you can make it,” Delfiner told TheWrap. “You also have to understand the ad-supported business and how it works.”
Delfiner came out of traditional international and domestic movie distribution. He ran the home video company of his mentor, a guy you might have heard of — Aaron Spelling (“Charlie’s Angels,” “Dynasty,” “Beverly Hills, 90210”). A decade later, Delfiner moved to Screen Media Ventures, where he conceived and managed its digital distribution strategy, specifically the free streaming ad-supported platforms Popcornflix, Frightpix, Comedyfunflix, Familyfunflix and Espanolflix.
“We had a big library of movies at that company,” Delfiner said. “And, at the time, Roku was the only platform out there. Maybe they had 2 million people at the time; now they have 60 million users. But at the end of the day, I was looking at companies like Apple, which was the major player then. And I said to myself, ‘Wait a minute, if they can do that, we have 2000 movies, I’m just going to copy that and see if we can make it work.’”
That was Delfiner’s, as they say, “ah ha moment.” The digital world was clearly germinating, his company had the goods, they had the big resources… and he had an idea. He contracted and oversaw all app developers and app development for each platform, including Roku, Samsung, IOS, Android, Web, X-box, Sony Bravia, Panasonic, LG, Google TV, Blackberry and on and on. Basically, he built the business while simultaneously learning it from the bottom up. But after five years at Screen Media, he realized he was ready to go on his own. And WatchFreeFlix was born.
He began to acquire movies for distribution that he thought that particular audience who was into streaming was interested in, which he defined mainly as 18-45-year-old males. “Not that there weren’t other people watching — obviously, women were watching, senior citizens were watching, baby boomers like me were watching,” he said. But his plan was to focus on one genre at a time, and he started with action-thriller, creating watch lists while concentrating on his ability to get the right content.
Delfiner started with WatchFreeFlix in 2014 and now, in 2022, he has 13 genre-specific offshoot channels that include horror, action thriller, romance, sci-fi, documentary, foreign, drama, crime, thriller, action and comedy. And coming in April, he’ll be launching WatchFreeMysteryFlix. Across all WatchFree channels, Delfiner has about 1.5 million viewers per month. By the end of 2022, he’s planning to have around 30 channels in total.
“That’s not the huge numbers that, you know, a lot of the studios and the bigger players have, but here’s the really good news about my 1.5 million viewers — I don’t lose viewers; I gain viewers,” Delfiner said. “My viewership has stayed strong, and it grows. And I make sure that I continually give them more and more. I have about 25 vendors, who keep putting up more and more and more movies every quarter. And every month more vendors sign up.”
With vendors continually supplying fresh content and an unlimited quantity of genre possibilities, the sky is the limit for WatchFreeFlix growth. “Here’s the deal: there is an endless source of genres. I won’t say as many grains of sand on the beach, but anything you can think of will be a genre, anything that would aggregate movies under a certain content context. There’s no end to it. Look at what’s happening all of a sudden because of ‘Squid Game.’ People can’t get enough Korean movies. The second that it happened, I test-launched on my main channel. I just launched British flix and Asian flix. Now I’m gonna see how well that does. And I also need to aggregate enough movies to build a second channel, at least a couple hundred movies to acquire before I can watch a channel. That’s the minimum.”
It’s all about keeping an eye on trends and staying one step ahead of them, Delfiner said, adding that he’s thinking about a cat channel, an alien channel and a car channel, with movies focusing on each of those genres. “It’s not ‘build it and they will come.’ It’s paying attention, giving what the viewer wants, and making the user interface an easy experience so they can just get right to it,” he said.
Delfiner’s success is built on his love of movies plus the experience and knowledge he has gained over three decades about the distribution business. His advice to anyone who’s interested in taking that leap of faith: Do your homework.
“This is probably a business that has such great opportunity because there’s no barrier to entry, but you have to study and understand how the business works,” he said. “You gotta ask questions and you gotta use your instinct and you gotta believe. And here’s a critical point — you gotta put your money where your mouth is. And if you’re not passionate about it, don’t do it.”