PPV

Pay Per View (PPV) is the exchange of payment for a specific live event broadcast on a specific channel, at a specific time, for a limited duration. Typically, these are premium events like boxing bouts, football finals, or other high-profile, high-value broadcasts. The event mapping the programme in the channel is marked in some way to indicate that the event must be purchased under the terms of a specific product and not those of the channel service as a whole.

This means that a PPV product:

• Is a strictly transactional product that a maps to a specific programme event on a channel.
• Must be purchased before the PPV event starts, but perhaps possibly before the end of the PPV event if the applicable legal terms and conditions allow. This is an important rule, as accepting payment for the PPV event after is starts (and definitely after it ends) will result in customer disappointment.
• Has additional subscription rights that are conferred after the PPV event only if the product offering calls these out specifically, that is, if the channel is normally subscription-only and the customer does not have rights for it, purchasing the PPV event will not grant them additional access to the channel after the end of the PPV event.

PPV is not:

• A VOD asset in the normal sense, in that the PPV event is specifically live and the value is intrinsically in the fact that it is live.
• A catch-up (CU) event – the PPV event may be recorded and made available for catch-up as part of regular channel/capture, but access to a live PPV product would not normally confer CU rights.
• A recurring subscription service – however, subscription is implied somewhat where Multiple PPV support is required, allowing multiple distinct PPV events to be part of a single product that references a channel that is dedicated to PPV events. However, purchase and billing is still represented by a single transaction.

Data Model

In MDS there are flags to signal PPV at three different levels: services (channels), products, and programmes (events):

Services (channels)

(Available through the /btv/services API)

A channel that supports PPV events will contain an additional ppvEnabled flag to signal this:

{
   "id" :  "sky_sports_1" ,
   "Title" :  "Sky Sports 1" ,
   "ppvEnabled" :  true
}

Programmes (events)

(Available through the /btv/programmes API)

Each channel has a number of events. Not all events have to be PPV, but those that are will be signalled with an isPPV flag.

A PPV event will also be associated with a PPV product. This product is how a customer would purchase access to the event.

{
    "id" :  "superbowl" ,
    "productRefs" : [
      "sports_ppv"
    ],
    "Title" :  "Superbowl 2020" ,
    "isPPV" :  true
}

Products

(Available through the /btv/products API)

A PPV product is very much the same as any other product. It contains a description, price, currency etc. The only differentiator is that it is signalled with the flag "type": "ppv".

{
   "id" :  "sports_ppv" ,
   "type" :  "ppv"
}

Supported use cases