Jeff Shultz
Courtesy of Paramount
Delta SkyMiles members — the airline company’s loyalty program that is free to join — will be able to watch the entire Paramount+ streaming library as part of their in-flight entertainment beginning this spring, the companies said on Thursday.
SkyMiles members will have access to free, high-speed internet and the premium tier of Paramount+, which is largely ad-free aside from live programming like sports and news, for flights originating from a U.S. location. Once connected to the in-flight WiFi, passengers will be able to create a Paramount+ account and watch the entire library for free. After landing, members will be given a free trial to Paramount+’s premium tier, though the company has not yet specified a timeframe for the length of the trial.
Delta first reached out to Paramount a little more than a year ago to be the airline’s streaming partner as part of a major update to Delta’s entertainment offerings, according to Jeff Shultz, the chief strategy officer and chief business development officer for Paramount Streaming. To facilitate the increase in entertainment, the airline will be rolling out high-speed satellite internet, powered by Viasat, to more than 700 of its aircrafts beginning on Feb. 1 and upgrading its seatback screens to smart devices, Delta CEO Ed Bastian said at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Wednesday.
The pact between Paramount and Delta is an upgrade from the typical partnership between a streamer and airline, where only a select number of film and TV titles are usually made available to watch on a flight at any given time, usually due to windowing rights issues or a plane’s limited server storage capacity for content. (In December, Peacock partnered with Jet Blue to offer select Peacock Original titles like Bel-Air and Pitch Perfect: Bumper in Berlin for free on seatback screens, though subscribers can access the entire Peacock catalog from their personal devices.) For passengers streaming from their devices, aircrafts also may not have enough bandwidth to service multiple devices trying to stream content, making the experience less than ideal or not even possible.
In offering the entire Paramount+ library, Paramount is looking to increase exposure for its shows and draw in new subscribers from the 50 million unique passengers who fly Delta every year, Shultz said. “1883 and 1923 and Tulsa King, these are hits. They’re doing so much work for us in terms of acquisition and retention, engagement. Our consumers love them, but they’re objectively underexposed,” Shultz told The Hollywood Reporter. “It’s a fact that most people haven’t seen them, and many people haven’t even heard of [them], and so this is an opportunity for us to expose those shows to this massive audience.”
And because each passenger who wants to watch Paramount+ content on a Delta flight will create an account, the streamer will have direct access to its new viewers. As streaming services contend with a slowdown in growth, a boost in new subscribers would be much-needed for Paramount Global’s marquee streaming service. At the end of September, Paramount+ had 46 million subscribers, while Pluto TV — the free, ad-supported service — hit 72 million monthly active users.
Other updates to Delta’s entertainment offerings include a partnership with the New York Times to offer games like Wordle, Spelling Bee and the crossword for passengers this year.